Peter Palmer Junior Relay

Last weekend Maroc sent a team to take part in the Peter Palmer Relay at Sutton Park, near Birmingham.  The event is a junior relay, 6 legs (with multiple runners allowed on leg 5) starting at 0530 on Sunday morning to allow for at least 2 legs to be run at night.

The Maroc team starting travelling about 7am on the Saturday morning

- driving to Stonehaven station and catching the 0838 Cross Country service to Birmingham, arriving at 1555 - so a long journey - particularly long since it was a glorious sunny day the whole length of the country....

At Sutton Coldfield it turned out we were one of the first teams to arrive!  Dinner was had - at a local Macdonalds as all other restaurants were fully booked.  At 7pm the football tournament started and the 3 Maroc boys teamed up with 2 others and after a slow start (only beating an SYO team that included twelve year olds on

penalties) they won the tournament without conceding a goal - a good omen for the weekend?

After a (very) short sleep the first leg runners woke to a lovely clear starry night.  At 530 the race started (see BO website for a great photo of the mass start).  Just over 30 mins later Patrick raced in to finish in 3rd place, Finlay took over and after leading for a while missed a couple of controls in vague vegetation and came back in 6th place.  Jessica, wearing a head torch for possibly the first time in her life, set off and ran steadily to return in 8th place.  Jane ran a fast time on the 4th, Orange, leg and pulled the team up to 7th.  Jenny and Mariel set off together on the 5th leg and it was Mariel who returned holding onto 7th place.  Joab set off on the 6th, Green leg and came through the spectator loop with NOC

(Nottingham) right on his shoulder, but by the finish he had dropped his shadow and was clear in 6th place.

The team were 6th overall but won the Norwich Trophy for top small club.

After the prizegiving - a small trophy and a large tin of chocolates, we headed back to the station and travelled into Birmingham to while away a couple of hours until our train left.  Unfortunately after finding food there was not enough time to see the Staffordshire Gold that was being displayed at the Art Gallery - the queues were about 40 minutes!

After a fraught few minutes in Edinburgh as a "technical" problem on the train was sorted we set off on the penultimate leg of our return journey.  We reached Stonie at about quarter to ten and drove home, finally reaching home at about 1030 - a long weekend with a lot of travel (about 22 hours travelling in  total), but well worthwhile.

The Relay was a great race, good competition and a great chance for social interaction with other juniors.

I think Maroc will be back in the future.

Brief results:

leg 1

1st Peter Hodkinson NOC 27.56

3rd Patrick  32.39 (2nd place was in a non comp team) leg 2

1st Thomas Fellbaum   MDOC 28.16

7th Finlay 39.55

leg 3

1st Chris Young HH 26.14

16th Jessica 43.00

leg 4

1st Ben Ross OD 20.12

6th Jane  24.24

leg 5

William Parkinson NOC 13.57

19th Mariel 18.41

Jenny 25.22

leg 6

1st Matthew Halliday OD 32.38

5th Joab 37.51

Full results