Just fifteen minutes before the start of the Boxing Day / Easter Monday handicap race it was looking like it might be a very damp and lonely race for the seven or eight hardy souls who had turned up at Leighton Town FC for the final event in the club championship season.

However, as the 11am kick-off time approached people gradually started to emerge from the woodwork clad in wet weather gear and ready to run and by the time we crossed the road towards The Falcon we were up to a merry(ish) 16.

All the participants were absolutely raring to go around the 5.6 mile historic loop that simply goes along Stanbridge Road, over the bypass to Billington and back in on Billington Road. you could tell when Dave asked people to step up to the start line and most took a pace backwards! The route is not particularly inspiring, but dates back to the 80's before the pypass existed and now it would really mess up Dave's records if we changed it!

The format of the event is that Dave puts down a predicted time for you before the race based on recent performances and inside knowledge and not remotely on injuries, hangovers or any other excuse that you can muster up. The runners are not told their predicted times until the results are announced at the end and the winner is the person who beats their predicted time by the greatest margin.

Whilst it was pretty miserable standing around prior to this year's race, once you were running it was actually not too bad as it was around twelve degrees and although the rain was persistent it wasn't too heavy. The wind was into your face along the shortest of the three sides of the triangular route and so was probably the best we could have hoped for. It resulted in one slow mile as the headwind was followed by a steep hill at Billington, but the rest was pretty quick.

As far as the race itself goes, Joe Hurley took his traditional lead for the first hundred yards before Andy Inchley went past and ran the rest of the race from the front as he spent the vast majority waiting for Simon (hungover) and Pete (14 miles yesterday) to come back at him at the end. However, the finishing positions are an irrelevance as it is all about the handicap.

As it turned out, Simon and Pete ran round the course together, which meant that both were outside their times, but Simon being some 3:23 outside his took the wooden spoon for the event. dan Webb managed to run six minutes quicker than last year, but was still 15th as Dave clearly had high expectations of him.

There were four other people unable to beat Dave's predictions on the day, which left nine who did manage it, much to the surprise of most. Some notable ones were Fred who ran his quickest time since 1992, Chris Norman and Richard who were both three minutes quicker than last year and Andy Inchley who beat his PB from 1992 (when he was 16!).

However all of these efforts pale into insignificance against Mandy Clay. Nick gave Dave an estimated time for Mandy and Dave thought otherwise so took a further three minutes off, but despite these timings, all Mandy's efforts over the winter clearly paid off as she beat her hadicap by nearly four minutes to take the overall title by over 1:30. Many congratulations to Mandy for a cracking run.

Pos.	Name	Actual Time	Handicap (+/-)
1	Mandy Clay	53:06	– 3:54
2	Richard Inchley	43:57	– 2:28
3	Andy Inchley	32:15	– 1:35
4	Tim Inchley	36:51	– 0:59
5	Joe Hurley	36:33	– 0:57
6	Chris Norman	34:49	– 0:31
7	Liz Miller	51:56	– 0:24
8	Jo Breslin	38:28	– 0:22
9	Fred Watt	41:00	– 0:10
10	Pete Mackrell	34;34	+ 0:34
11	Nick Clay	37:21	+ 0:41
12	Chris Dimmock	40:33	+ 0:58
13	Jane Sauer	44:02	+ 1;12
14	Jordan Clay	38:50	+ 1:40
15	Dan Webb	40:53	+ 2:33
16	Simon Coombes	34:33	+ 3:23