CUHH v RAF v Eastern Counties 2007
By Aidan Brown
A dreary flatness, spattered with spent cartridges. "Our guards have thirty good reasons..." bawls the sergeant*. A shaved head pops into view, dodging through the furze bushes, rising out of the tank traps. "...for you not to go wandering around on the base." Then a pair of shoulders, pumping together, hauls up a chest, a light blue vest, a right leg, a left leg. "Live rounds," concludes the sergeant, "And only five people can use the toilets." But we are all cheering, or else running as hard as we can, to catch the man in blue. We cannot see him. He is too far ahead. He is... Owain Bristow.
This is RAF Barnham. The roaring of the planes, and the barbed wire fences let us know it, and just in case we'd forgotten, skinny blokes in blue with wings on their chests are chasing us across a shooting range. "One small lap and two big ones," we are told. The big lap takes in a forest, with a springy surface which makes bounding tricky, and lines of pale blue conifers, matching the attire of two thirds of the competitors. The others, the Eastern Counties, look like washed out wasps. "This is the easy bit," says the marshal, as we admire a couple of impressively deep and mud-filled trenches. The sign just before reads "Obstacle Course. For training vehicles only." Don't you believe it.
First off were the ladies. They only had one go in the trenches, the lucky lasses -- "one small lap and a medium." After the small lap, it didn't need a medium to reckon up the outcome of that race. Fresher Helen Rollins had racked up a substantial lead in the scrubland, and continued to pull away through the obstacle course. This in spite of a heavily bandaged knee. Some tense and empty seconds behind her, another talented fresher, fell runner Anna Mary Anderson maintained a solid 2nd place throughout. Polly Keen vanished. She had twisted her ankle earlier that week, but had bravely ventured onto the field, and was in third place by the top of the hill, only to be betrayed by the shot-up ground and the rotten path maintenance. She hobbled over to the finish line and joined in the cheering, as the rest of her team sprinted home one medium lap later. We saw good first performances from freshers Victoria Mason, Angharad Porteous and Cat Bounds, and a splendid sprint through the obstacle course from hard-as-nails Laura Spence.
"Two minutes to the men's race," and with a panting, shuffling, stretching kind of stance, we toed the line. "Starter, when you're-" MMmmmmrrrrrr! and we're off. The first few minutes were all elbows and verges, as we worked our way into a comfortable position. Nobody took much notice of which side of the flags they were on then. They didn't for the rest of the race either. We skirted the woods, the fire spades, and the portacabin, which was "TO LET", like all the other ones - the joke wore off after the 2nd one. We moved through flares and snares and smoke grenades, and didn't take a blind bit of notice of any of it. I spent that first lap tussling with a member of the Royal Air Force, and one Ben Stevens, a Cambridge fresher with a peculiar style - I can talk - and a persistent pace. As we raced down the hill and tracked out that first sandy path once again, I lost them both, and seriously considered stopping. Then, as we came through the woods on the first big lap, and faced up to the obstacle course, I remembered what I was there for, and decided that I wasn't going to let them beat me. That's when it really started to feel like running. My hands went cold, and the random thoughts that had been jostling in my head suddenly had no more jostle room. There was nothing outside the next breath. I didn't catch them, and, a few minutes ahead of me, no-one came near to catching Owain Bristow. Two more winged wonders followed him home, then three fast freshers: Matt Clark, Scott Knackstedt and Tim Pattison all impressed our enthusiastic captain with their first outing in Cambridge Blue.
The RAF mess hall bears a striking resemblance to an Italian restaurant, in all but one key respect: food. There was nothing there apart from mounds of biscuits, and gallons of squash. From the standard format, we had been led to expect a proper sit down meal: baked potato and beans; lasagne; pilchards. This, we were told, had not arrived. Was our hard earned grub confiscated by a certain over-zealous sergeant*? Who knows, but from our rather cold welcome - "No one told me you were turning up. If you go wandering around the camp you will be challenged. Don't run away. It won't be painful for me, I'm not the one they'll be shooting at" etc. - I wouldn't be surprised. Nevertheless, we are extremely grateful to the RAF, and the Eastern Counties, for hosting and organising a most challenging and enjoyable course. We won, it transpired, largely through weight of numbers, but also, as one wise owle pointed out, by running faster than the opposition - a key tactic, which will be crucial in the upcoming varsity campaign against Oxford. Equally crucial is your collaboration. To this end, run Cuppers, November 17th, meeting 11:30am Wilberforce Road pavilion.
*rank is imaginary.