Cannock & Stafford had teams in both the women’s 6 stage and men’s 12 stage races at the Midland Road Relays Championships at Sutton Park on Saturday.

Our men’s team finished 27th of the 76 teams that started the race. The first four athletes had to complete long legs and James McCann ran 33.38 to finish the first leg in 53rd place. Tom Eustace (30.37), Mark Shepherd (30.59) and Jon Biddle (32.03) left the team in 35th place at the start of the shorter legs.

Bill Chesters (17.57), Mitch Blundell (17.51) and Craig Pearson (17.53) lifted the team to 26th and solid runs from Chris Metcalfe (19.16), James Russell (19.13), Jagon Edge (20.11), Tom Orton (20.29) and Mark Green (20.49) brought the team home.

Our women had two teams entered. The ‘A’ team finished 32nd of 72 teams entered. Allegra Soutar ran one of the long legs in 41.41 to lie 48th, Hannah Malpass ran a short leg in 22.56 to pick up 5 places and Sue Kneill-Boxley gained a further place by running her long leg in 41.54. Vici Browning (23.03), Kelly Weatherall (23.30) and Sally Gray (21.41) all moved up the field to give us the 32nd place finish.

Unfortunately, our B team only had 5 runners but were in 48th position after the fifth leg. Ann Robinson (46.50) was followed by Lyn Clare (26.43), Christine Kilkenny (43.24), Natalie Boswell (23.55) and Dot Fellows (26.47)