Stubbington Green Runners

The Stubbington Striders left Whiteley at 3.30am to head for the shores of Beachy Head. We were driven by our MPOM (Military Precision Operations Manager) otherwise known as Euan McGrath and our team consisted of Team Captain Tim Sullivan, John Flynn, Richard Snell, Gill Rose, Rachael Openshaw and me Donna Mitchell.  Tim, John and Rachael having all competed in the relay in previous years knew what a tough task lay ahead but for Richard, Gill and I we could only imagine the depths we would have to dig too to summon the energy needed to complete the mammoth task before us.

We arrived at a very windy and surprisingly cold Beachy Head all ready to be debriefed at 5.30am. We were all warmed up by our MPOM who really had thought of everything including a stove and kettle to treat us all to a nice warm cuppa before the race start at 6am.

Our race started alongside 8 other teams and our aim for the day was to try and do the best we could against those other 8 teams. John set off on leg 1 which is particularly tough with the renowned seven sisters before him. The weather was fresh to say the least but fortunately there was no mist on the cliff top. John ran a very respectable leg and finished in 5th place. Leg 2 was down to me and I managed to complete it without losing a position and finished keeping our team in 5th place. Rachael was next up for leg 3 and she ran most impressively passing 2 of the other teams and bringing us to the end of the leg in 3rd place! At this point we were getting really competitive and our aim was to get into 1st position.

Tim ran leg 4 and he delivered 110% (fortunately the Victory runner took a wrong turn) and he brought us to the end of the leg in 1st position out of our original 9 teams that set off at 6am. By now we were flying and we were determined to hold onto this position and try to stay in front of those other teams if we could. Gill and Richard both had a huge pressure on them running legs 5 and 6 trying to make sure we held onto our 1st position which they both did brilliantly, after all 6 of us had run a leg each The Stubbington Striders were leading the relay! Woohoo!!

We managed to lead the relay until leg 8 when some of the faster teams who had started at 6:30am caught up with us so we now knew the Ladies A Team and Men’s B Team would not be far away and although we thought it improbable we wanted to cross the finish line before them so we upped our game and ran our hearts out in a bid to do just that. We held the Men’s B Team off until leg 13 when Nick Kimber caught John. The Men’s B Team were flying and having a really great relay and although we were gutted that they had caught us we also delighted they were running so well and looking so strong!  At this point we knew the Ladies A Team and Men’s A Team would be closing down on us too so we pushed with all we had to try and get to the finish before they caught us.

We managed a sneaky pub stop on leg 17 to watch Tim pass by the Millbury’s, we also managed to shout out a cheer for the Men’s B Team here. Once Tim passed by we headed off to the end of Leg 17 to collect him but there was a runner in a green shirt in our way so we couldn’t get through in time and ended up being 2 mins late. A valuable lesson learned but Tim was very understanding and extremely out of breath. Poor Richard was kicked out of the mini bus before it fully ground to a halt and had no chance to compose himself for Leg 18. By this point we knew unless Richard went terribly wrong we were going to be the 2nd Stubbington Team over the finish line and 1st team out of the original 9 that set off at 6.00am. Richard had a great run on the glory leg and brought us home in a very respectable 14hours 5mins 31secs.

We went out on the day after a prep talk from Euan which consisted of “Go out hard and finish even harder” and that’s exactly what we all did! We had a fabulous day filled with lashings and lashings of team spirit and finished delighted in the knowledge that we done ourselves proud!

We’d like to thank our MPOM and Life Coach Euan McGrath for everything he done on the day, we all found his motivation invaluable and he just takes prepared to a whole new level! A huge well done to the Men’s B Team who finished 1st in their category and to the Ladies A Team and Men’s A Team who as usual ran fantastically well.

Our leg times are below, apologies to the runners if the times are out by their Garmin times but these are only rough times based on the running watch at the start however they will count as official times on our sheet:

Leg	Runner	Leg Start	Leg Finish	Leg Time
1	John	06:00:00	06:55:05	00:55:05
2	Donna	06:55:05	07:48:16	00:53:11
3	Rachael	07:48:16	08:23:38	00:35:22
4	Tim	08:23:38	09:17:12	00:53:34
5	Gill	09:17:12	10:00:47	00:43:35
6	Richard	10:00:47	10:39:07	00:38:20
7	John	10:39:07	11:23:00	00:43:53
8	Rachael	11:23:00	12:25:00	01:02:00
9	Donna	12:25:00	13:04:20	00:39:20
10	Gill	13:04:20	13:33:35	00:29:15
11	Tim	13:33:35	14:20:05	00:46:30
12	Richard	14:20:05	15:03:23	00:43:18
13	John	15:03:23	16:09:10	01:05:47
14	Rachael	16:09:10	17:00:00	00:50:50
15	Donna	17:00:00	17:37:51	00:37:51
16	Gill	17:37:51	18:09:20	00:31:29
17	Tim	18:09:20	19:17:39	01:08:19
2 mins delay finishing our beer :( sorry Tim
18	Richard	19:19:39	20:05:31	00:45:52

Photos: Tracy Bell | Penny Forse | Georgie Wallis | Euan McGrath | Marcus Lee