Men 13th at National 12-stage

Woodford’s senior men contested the National 12-Stage for the first time in 6 years in Sutton Coldfield on 6th April. They ended the season on a high by finishing 13th, and 9th Southern team. The gain of a couple of big guns in Ben Potrykus and Ed Shepherd, who ran our quickest long legs and enabled a reshuffle of some formerly long leg runners onto their preferred short longs, helped us to a marked improvement on our 11th in the Southern 12-stage two weeks ago. The results are a demonstration of the overall dominance of the South, despite concentrations in big city clubs in the North and Midlands handing gold (Leeds City) and silver (Bristol and West) to those regions.

The team had travelling support, but missed the voice of Charlie Crump echoing over the heathland of Sutton Park, after learning of his death on Good Friday. Team members wore black ribbons in his memory, and hope he’d have enjoyed the spectacle of stalwarts and young athletes delivering a vintage Woodford team performance.

Ben Potrykus had had ambitions to come in first on leg 1, and he led the race out as far as the turning point at the distant end of the park. He couldn’t quite live with the pace of first finisher Jack Goodwin of Bedford, who came in in 26:04, but Ben’s 26:27 is a club record for a Sutton Park long-leg. (The course has changed slightly from the classic route dating back to the 1970s, but the long legs have been calibrated to the same distance with much the same combination of hills, so we treat it as comparable). This time edges out Ed Shepherd and Matt Gunby’s times from 2018 and 2013 by 3 and 4 seconds respectively.

The short leg has increased in length somewhat from the classic route, but the home straight is shorter, perfect for a sprint finish from Tom Phillips, whose 16:06  was comfortably the fastest recorded on the post-2015 route, and brought us back in 9th.

Tom was the first of five team members all working this race in to their taper for the London marathon, and he handed over to Ed Shepherd , who was the second. Ed’s 26:50 places him 8th on our all-time list for long-legs (behind his own course best of 26:30, which is now 2nd on the list), squeezing ahead of Phil Norman’s opening leg from 2018.

Owen Hibbert made his debut in a Woodford vest in tough circumstances, with the team dropping to 11th after his 16:57, as hitherto sleeping giants such as Bristol and West, and Cambridge and Coleridge started to bring out their own big guns.

Tom Frith, also preparing for London, was wary about too much pounding ahead of the big day in two weeks, but ran a powerful leg of 27:23 to bring us back in in 10th.

He handed over to Angus Holford who shipped one place to Tonbridge, gained one on Western Tempo; and was overtaken by Belgrave before taking the place back in the home straight for no change overall, and was pleased with his 16:31.

London marathon preparee Tom Beedell ran 28:10 on his long leg, and described the wind on the out-and-back section of his long leg as ‘hell’. The race was still tightly packed at this point, with a blanket of 62 seconds covering 9th to 12th places.

Nathan Wright learned from his fast start at Milton Keynes and approached the hills carefully before accelerating on the flat middle section. Nathan couldn’t quite get the speed he wanted on the downhill, but he only slipped one place on his 16:51 leg to a Swansea team member storming through as they began their climb towards 8th place.

Joel Doye described his run of 28:14 as “very average”. He initially took a big chunk out of a runner in front but never caught up, and held on to 13th place. He performed admirably over the long out-and-back section, treated to the sight of pre-Olympian Phil Sesemann surging back the other way, as Leeds City took a stranglehold on the race.

Dan Steel had been a late substitution for an unwell Videsh Weerakkody.  Our final London marathon preparee ran 17:04, but handed over to Haider Razzaq just 8 seconds behind Salford.

Haider’s own run split the difference between Tom Beedell’s and Joel Doye’s at 28:12, but importantly he caught Salford, and an impressive sprint finish put clear water between us and them.

At this point the rest of the squad celebrated not being lapped, and took in the spectacle of Leeds City winning by over three and a half minutes from Bristol and West, and then a home-straight sprint for bronze edged by Highgate Harriers over Cambridge and Coleridge. However at this stage, all but the top 10 clubs had been corralled into mass starts, and final leg runner Tom Adolphus was not started with an 11 second lead over Salford, rather alongside them with the final result to be calculated later. Decathlon-1500m-style, Tom knew that staying in touch with his Salford adversary would be enough to hold the position. The deficit was quite wide, mid-race, but Tom pulled it back considerably by the end, to deliver a run of 16:41.

It was an anti-climactic finish to a tight day of racing, and a snafu with the results meant the anxious wait extended well into Sunday. We understand the need for a mass start at some point; but to deny a straight relay to over 80% of the finishing teams, including at least 5 who were not lapped, seems to defeat the purpose of the competition. We hope the organizers will take a more reasonable approach in future. Nevertheless, it turned out that Tom’s storming finish had closed to within 5 seconds of Salford’s runner, preserving our 13th place by 6 seconds. We also had the pleasure of defeating last year’s champions Central AC by less than half a minute.

Results: https://www.race-results.co.uk/results/2024/nat1224.pdf