Newport Harriers stepped up a class to enter this national competition for
the first time in years, having qualified following our 3rd place in last year’s
Welsh Road Relay Championship. The National 6-Stage Road Relays is a prestigious
event that brings together the best clubs and the best club runners from around
the country so the going was always going to be tough for us. Unfortunately we
had to send a severely weakened team – our best runners either wanted to run but
were injured (get well soon James), or were fit but didn’t want to run (bit of a
shame).
Newport made their mark on leg 1. Steve Davies jostled his way into 7th place
with a time of 17:20, which was the 23rd fastest time overall. It was then a
case of holding on as best we could. Chris Oxley had a tough run on leg 2 as
there were several quality athletes hunting him down. We slipped to 53rd place
although Chris produced Newport’s second fastest run on the day. The Goodger
brothers then took over on legs 3 and 4. This was Mark’s first competitive run
after a two-year gap – he admitted afterwards that he would have dropped out but
didn’t want to let the team down. Dave was returning from injury and ran well to
produce Newport’s third fastest run of the day. By this time we were 78th with
only Stourbridge behind us. Unfortunately Stourbridge had their fastest runner
up against Darryn McAtee and we eased ourselves into 79th place. Owolabi Adebiyi
couldn’t turn it around on the last leg, but then after all he is a disability
sprint specialist who was making up the team, so all credit to Owolabi.
There were 83 starting teams so technically we weren’t last - just 79th. There
were three other Welsh teams (Cardiff, Swansea, Swansea ‘B’) though none of
their athletes could match Steve’s time. There were 483 athletes in total -
although Newport had three runners in the slowest ten times, at least we didn’t
have the slowest. If the day was tinged with some disappointment, we established
our presence and now have a target for next year – don’t come last, uh, I mean
don’t come 79th.
79th Newport Harriers 2:11:47
| Leg | Athlete | Time | Team | Fastest overall |
| 1 | Steve Davies | 17:20 | 7th | 23rd |
| 2 | Chris Oxley | 20:31 | 53rd | 403rd |
| 3 | Mark Goodger | 25:04 | 78th | 482nd |
| 4 | Dave Goodger | 21:57 | 78th | 457th |
| 5 | Darryn McAtee | 23:11 | 79th | 476th |
| 6 | Owolabi Adebiyi | 23:44 | 79th | 480th |