AUTUMN 2007 - Serpentine

RACE REPORT
The round the clock
Norfolk relay
runners had a support cyclist and a support car (with flashing light) to
run them down if they slowed down. Leg 9, for Hunor Albert-Lorincz
was one of the classic Serpie-BA battles. Hunor gave the BA runner
a 2 minute head-start and ate up the ground in the first five miles to
overtake him. BA came back in the last mile into Great Yarmouth,
overtaking Hunor with about 200 metres to go. Hunor kicked for the
line and handed over the baton 1 second ahead of BA. Yes,
1 second, just 11 hours, 22 minutes and 45 seconds and 93 miles
after we had started with them. By the way, in case you've never
been to Great Yarmouth... it's a bit like Las Vegas, but probably not
quite such a centre of excellence in forensic science. At this point
some of the team headed off for some well deserved kip (and even a
beer or two). Others, displaying the borderline-psychotic behaviour
that runners are famous for, kept going…
Legs 10-17 – making it through the night
Leg 10 saw Rob Westaway finally get off his bike (I think he cycled
about 50 miles of support) for a 15.1 mile run. Leg 11 fell to Greg
Stevens – see below, but in summary an awesome destruction of rival
teams. Andy Hibbert picked up the baton for leg 12 and 18.4 miles,
at 1.15am – this meant that he would be running when, medically
speaking the body is at its lowest. Not much sign of that as he
breezed through in 2hrs 3 minutes. Leg 13 was Steve Brett, coming
back from injury by running 14 miles through Thetford Forest. Yes,
a forest, in the pitch black, wearing a head torch. And why not? Leg
14 saw Gargi Patel take on 8.8 miles to Wissington. Alex Elferink
had been scheduled to run this leg, but after some last minute
changes had switched to leg 17. Alex stressed to Gargi how
important it was for her to still run to his schedule. Which she did.
Alex shut up. Leg 15, and the end was just about in sight. Mark
Pinnick took 7.2 miles to Downham Market as the sun was coming
up. After just shy of 21 hours running, we had a 7 second lead on
BA. Leg 16, saw Clare Riddiford, stepping into the breach for the
team and carrying an injury, pull through. While the night was full of
heroes, a special mention to Alex for driving a support vehicle at
about 8 mph for a 7 hour shift. Which sounds impressive, until you
realise that’s what London cabbies do every day. We will gloss over
his attempt to run over a Serpie runner while having a snack. The
final leg in fact fell to Alex, who ran 11.7 miles from Stowbridge back
to King’s Lynn, after no sleep. Alex had two main sources of
motivation on his leg: 1) “There's no way a 65 year old is passing
me” after spotting a, well, older man behind him and 2) trying to get
away from Roger who offered him a gel about 50 times.
And so we arrived at the finish at 9.25am, a mere 23 hours and 25
minutes after starting and just 16 minutes outside our estimate, covering
the 193 miles at an average pace of 7.17 min miles. We finished 12th
overall and 9th in our category. All were stars, but particularly noteworthy
was Tor's stage record and Greg Stevens covering his 19.6 mile stage at
an age graded 78% at one o'clock in the morning. Alan Hall and Alex
Elferink deserve a huge round of applause for undertaking the mammoth
organisational task that RNR involves. Special thanks also to Ron Hagell
for his cycle support, and to Helene Johansson who cycled and ran pace.
The winning time was 21:50, or a pace of 6.47 min miles from City of
Norwich AC, which is quite extraordinary considering the off-road and
off-body clock elements. And the lamentation? Well BA pipped us, by 31
minutes. But just as the lamentation should have started, some
champagne mysteriously appeared! As did cooked breakfasts, event
T-shirts and cubes (always comes in handy, a cube). All in all, a classic
event, many thanks to the organisers. Bring on next year!
Great teamwork guys, and raise that champagne!
…the night legs
“Lunch as dinner?!”
by Andy Hibbert
While the daytime runners were running their legs I had been
spending the day trying to trick my body clock. I needed to be in
a state where I could run further than I have for a long time,
starting at somewhere round 1:20am, and consider that a
reasonable thing to be doing. So having treated lunch as dinner,
put myself to sleep with some quiet music around 8:00pm and
woken myself up at midnight with some rather livelier fare I found
myself stood next to a field, in the dark, on the edge of Norfolk.
A car, bike and runner suddenly approached yelling “Serpies”,
around 5 minutes before I thought they would, and I was off.
Racing in the middle of the night felt very strange and was full of
memorable experiences. At first I was running along an unlit road
with no one else around except Alan, my cycle support. The view
of the stars was incredible and I looked up at them regularly during
the run. This view of the expanse of stars contrasted with a limited
view of the road ahead lit by the headlights behind me.
Our nemesis British Airways started behind me. I’d not been
following the race so didn’t know this until their runner was next
to me. This was a rivalry that had built up throughout the day
before, with us exchanging places regularly, and he could not be
allowed to beat me. But he did. I got a stitch by drinking too much
cold water (a lesson forgotten from the previous winter) and
slowed down. I convinced myself I’d catch him later. Once I
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