Manchester Relays 2005
By Will George
Last Saturday a small but perfectly formed group of Harey's made the journey north for the first race in this year's university relay series, the Manchester Relays. Despite crossing into the permanent rain belt around 20 miles south of Manchester spirits were high with hopes of a strong showing. Upon arrival Kyla Bowen-la Grange attempted to set a new fashion trend, brushing aside comments such as "it looks like you're wearing a bin bag" and even managing to perform a full warm-up encased in plastic. Meanwhile the continuous downpour was making choice of footwear a controversial subject with the course now equally split into mud-bath and tarmac. This was further complicated by the presence of a small water jump at around the half way mark of the 2 mile loop.
Such worries were soon forgotten as the race got underway with Rowan "I'll never leave" Hooper running a solid first leg for the men before handing over to local boy Rich Ward. After negotiating the concrete section of the course with speed and overtaking an impressive nine runners the spike clad Mr. Ward would have been feeling good as he reached the half way point of the course. However here disaster struck as a confident two-footed leap across the water jump resulted in his leaving with one less shoe than he had started with. Battling the pain impressively (and still nursing a broken toe) over several further gravel sections Rich was inevitably slowed by this handicap and slid back through the field. The remaining four runners of Andy Bell, Si Rutherford, Pat Ward and Will George managed to pull the team up by eight places with Pat zipping past 5 runners for the fastest Cambridge leg of the day, but the final position of 11th place was disappointing for a strong team.
On the women's side no such calamities were encountered with the trio of Kyla Bowen la Grange (now removed from her protective casing) Sarah Kummerfeld and Catharine Wood running strongly against quality opposition to come home 17th out of 44 teams. With the Fresher's Fun Run to look forward to the following day a hasty exit was made, a decision which proved wise as the results would not come out until 2 days later and even then were questionable in their accuracy. After a brief sojourn at a service station at which Rowan and Catharine competed for the tramp lookalike prize, both using mud splattered legs to good effect until Catharine's lack of footwear proved decisive, the teams returned to Cambridge, eager for another day of racing on the morrow.