11th march, prestwold hall Loughborough. As I lined up at the back of the humberside pen and looked around me I realised there was the very real chance of me finishing last in this race!

After qualifying through the reserves list after the recent Humberside championships, it had been full steam ahead with training for the London marathon. This meant no reduction in mileage or intensity through the month of march and my legs felt like lead as I got changed next to Richie buckles car. Quick bacon buttie and turbo coffee took the edge off but I still felt the most over cooked I’ve ever been for a race.

We bimbled down to the Humberside tent. “Gold vest with Humberside on the back!” The bloke said too me. I had my vest on backwards, what a dick, not the best start!

In the pens, the teams are organised with the fastest runner at the front, down to the slowest runner at the back, so when the gun went I had no chance of a flying start- even if I wanted to.

It was 12k with one small and two large loops of the grounds, gently rolling and not too soft, it was one of the more mellow courses and reasonably quick. I soon settled in at the back with Richey a dozen yards up and maybe ten guys behind me, my target was not to be the last Humberside runner and score for the team event.

Half way through the little loop and the front pack are off about 400 meters away, great to watch Olympic runner Andy Vernon do his thing, top athlete!

My breathing eased into the first of the big loops and I started to pass people on the long climbs, I could still just about see Dickies shiny head in the crowd in front so knew I wasn’t doing too shit.

Onto the last lap and my legs woke up and started to work and I reeled in stragglers one at a time, picking them off and moving on to the next target. 800m to go I put the hammer down and give everything I had, sprinting down the finishing straight to take 229th position out of 283 finishers and the last scoring place in the 6 man team event. Richey was 35 seconds or so up on me and 30 seconds behind Gregan “Timmy mallet” Clarkson, with places 211 and 192 respectively, josh Taylor brown and Harry Holmes both had solid runs with josh in at 157th and harry 137th and our top man was Kingstons rising star Harry Powell in 53rd place. Andrew weaver finished in 266th position, with two of our runners dropping out of the race (fannies).

Top day out and a real pleasure and privilege to be there in county colours racing with and against some top runners!