PPAC is back after a long layoff with an all-new team relay event along the riverside running track - the first time we've held an event at this location. It's off-road but was relatively busy on the morning of the race and pedestrians also have to share the space with cyclists.
This interval style relay event was put together as part of preparations for the following 5k road race after several weeks with no racing.
It's the first time we hosted an end-to-end style relay (relays are generally easier to organise around a fixed loop) and although the ideal team size was 3, we shuffled the athletes and ended up with one team of 3 and two teams of 2.
The race consisted of a total of 18 x 544 m legs for a total distance of 9.79 km. Athletes in the team of 3 would each run six legs of 544 m (3.26 km each) and those in the teams of 2 would run double legs (1,088 m) four times and a single leg either at the start or the end depending on team strategy (4.90 km each).
After a very fast initial lap the race settled down as athletes avoided stray pedestrians & cyclists and dealt with bright and very humid conditions (the riverside route is fully exposed to the rising sun with no shade at all and no clouds were in sight!).
There was some tough racing across the board, with team Andarge/Hugo finally finishing in 34:35, comfortably 20s ahead of team Neil/Jack after regularly swapping leads up to leg 15/18. Team Paul/Matt/Gretchen was not far behind to take third place, with a time of 35:36. These are some great times for almost 10 km of team racing in challenging conditions after a long time without racing - excellent work all round!
Team results and analysis
Individual results and analysis
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