South London Harriers

Just heard that John Foss came 10th overall and 1st MV50. That is a great result - respect!

Well done Fossi - you may make CNN this year!

Yesterday's Sunday Times page 12. Large colour photo and piece about man v horse.

Another great weekend in Wales for this classic cross country race. It had rained all week in Powys and driving down on Friday, the slate grey mountains were blending seamlessly into a slate grey sky with incessant rain joining the two.
We arrived early evening and went to have a look at the river crossing which was completely swollen and a raging torrent which would clearly be very unsafe to run through.

Upon arriving at the pasta party, we were therefore unsurprised to find that the race had been re-routed to take out the river and had also been put back an hour - the bad news was that the race was now a mile longer! The Neuadd Arms was a bit quieter than usual and looking at the results, there were 90 odd non starters or finishers so the weather must have put a lot of people off. Great to see Stuart Majors name on the winners board in the pub.

Saturday morning was totally different - early morning drizzle gave way to some sunshine and it was actually quite warm at the midday start. Conditions on the course though were officialy very heavy; the first time in the events history that they have been so described. There was lots of standing and running water all over the route and tons of mud everywhere - I took an early bath on stage one but don't think I've ever felt happier in a race! Despite the extra mile on the course and the conditions, I still managed to take almost 30 seconds off last years time and was fairly ecstatic at the finish when the tannoy man announced me as first over 50.

The rest of the weekend passed in an alcoholic haze with my support crew of Dave and Jenny Grant, Jerry Twoomey, John Quaintance, Nina Pinkerton plus my wife Linda. Thanks to all of them for their great support at the end of stage one and the finish and for hanging about for the presentation. A nice meal and some good dancing on Saturday night. Legs completely wasted at the moment so probably won't be down until Thursday.

Results are here:

www.onlineraceresults.org.uk/mvh-runners-12.htm

Melvyn from Collingwood who is a regular at Banstead Woods took these pictures while running the course and give a great idea of how wet and muddy it was this year.

picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=100...OllQE&feat=email