2015 Teddy Hall Relays

[Note: Race photos generously provided by Barry Cornelius, oxonraces.com.]

Another pitifully out-of-shape runner in my department annually pesters me to take part in the Teddy Hall Relays and having let the previous 5 slip by I decided to sign up — I was due another round of mile repeats and this seemed an apt substitute.  It is a team event, generally, with each of four runners doing a 3.66 mile lap but solo runners are tolerated and I signed on as one of three such overachievers this year.  Here’s the full roster:

The winning men’s team lapped me as did the next 10 finishers, but I managed to beat 16 other men’s teams (and 31 out of 50 mixed teams) which was sort of heartening — most participants were less than half my age and at each lap they tagged in someone with fresh legs.

Lap 1

Still, while I was slow I ran like a metronome…the course measured 3.66 miles and my laps were
25:12
25:38
26:11
26:17
for an average of 25:50 and standard deviation of 30 seconds.  I paced on a fellow solo runner the first lap and he was right at my shoulder the second; we started chatting the third (he’s training for a series of marathons) and then he sort of phoned in the fourth lap and I didn’t see him until after visiting with some colleagues from work.  I’m not quite sure how it happened this way, but my best individual time (on the results pages) is listed as 24:13 which would be surprising and indicate that I fucked around in the transition space between timing mats for close to a minute (when essentially I just passed through tossing my bib number for that lap into the grass).

Lap 2

 

Good course, too, despite having to dodge pedestrians in The Plain and cyclists on the Thames Path.  No water available so it really is not suited to the solo runner (assumptions being that you would only run the course once then hand off to a teammate or celebrate the finish).

Lap 3

 

 

Oh, the splits for the winning team (Imperial) were 17:34, 18:06, 18:56, 17:29 (net 1:12:07…there’s a space between the start and finish timing mats that make net larger than the sum).  One guy managed 17:23 for fastest lap of the day.

Lap 4