2019 Results
This year’s female winning team was “JSK Ladies 4” with a time of 3:02, a new course record (previous 3:35). A tip of the hat goes to last year’s female winners “Ellon Athletics AC” for taking their time down from 2018’s 3:38 to this year’s 3:18.
There was a very close contest between male teams “JSK mens” and “Stonehaven Top Dogs”, with “Stonehaven Top Dogs” just taking the win with a new course record of 2:37 (previous 2:44) with JSK only about 30 seconds behind.
“Newburgh Dunes Mixed A” took the mixed prize in another course record of 2:43 (previous 2:51) a good 5 minutes ahead of the next team “Peterhead AC Mixed”.
A special mention to team “First Class” who wanted to field an over 60s team from Fraserburgh RC and achieved a very impressive 3:01.
The Race
I had not even started my main intended advertising campaign when the entries started flooding in and it was looking like a bumper year. The event got a big boost from a batch of JSK entries, who managed to field a total of ten teams. In the end there were 34 teams total out of an entry limit of 40.
Conditions were some of the most favourable in the years the race has been running. There wasn’t anything extreme like the midgie-fest we had one year and the extremely strong winds we had in another. Teams reported it was quite warm in the early legs and there was noticeable wind when running on the South sections but nothing too severe.
There were reports of a little rain at Auchnagatt during the run, and unfortunately we had about 20 minutes of moderate rain at the finish area which put a bit of a dampener on things for a while (and didn’t exactly help with results recording since I do it all manually on sheets of paper!)
It was great that so many people stuck around for the awarding of the trophies.
The BBQ this year was provided by Meat Monsters, providing smokey pulled pork and beef brisket with tasty homemade sauces.
No fancy chip timing here, just some soggy paper and bad handwriting.
Plenty of people stuck around to cheer on the prizegiving. A great way to round off the day.
Thanks
I’m very grateful to everyone who gave me a hand with organisation today. Thank you Stuart, Nicky, Claire, Glen, for help with race ops, and my mum for baking up some tablet which always goes down well with the runners. Plus a mention to Jen from JSK who very helpfully gave me a hand with getting ready before anyone else arrived.
Thank you to SYMPOSIUM Coffee House, and Eventfull Management Ltd for their help in offsetting race overheads, and to The Meadows for accommodating us with the venue despite a change in summer opening hours.
SYMPOSIUM coffee house
Eventfull Management Ltd
I would love to see this event achieve a sell-out next year so please come back if you can and spread the word to your friends and clubmates.
All the best
Steven Garden
Race Director, The Railway Relay.