The changeover at the end of leg one [Photo credit: Dave Woodhead]
From Dan McKeown…
The Bradford Millennium Way Relay took place on Sunday, with a crack squad of Harriers bringing home a heavily asterisked third place overall in the blistering sun. The most bronzed of bronze medals, if you will.
Leg one saw our opening batsmen, birthday boy Tom A (who was running with a commemorative balloon) and Jack make a largely uphill 10-mile journey from Bradford and Bingley Rugby Club on the bank of the River Aire, to Penistone Hill Country Park in Haworth. We had high hopes for this partnership of party animals, but sadly they were only able to eke out a measly five-minute lead over the rest of the field.
With a hospital pass like that, Gavin and Nick H could have been forgiven for downing tools on the spot. However, they manfully made the onward journey to Laycock (me neither, but it’s somewhere west of Keighley), ceding first place to Wakefield Harriers but holding the rest of the field at bay.
At Laycock, it was the turn of Tom L and Matt the Survivalist (doesn’t have WhatsApp or a car). This redoubtable duo were faced with navigating the scenic route to Silsden, a task which they accomplished with great aplomb, sending Nuno and Nick K off in fourth place overall.
Nuno and Nick’s leg was coming back into more familiar territory, Addingham and the stretch from Windgate Nick back to Ilkley. Obviously, that meant a bit of pressure not to foul up the navigation, but they took it in their stride, hot-footing it down to the Keighley Road handover in fifth place.
Danny T and I were soaking up the festival atmosphere at the handover, aided by a good contingent of supporting Harriers and the fact that Gav, showered and changed, was cheerfully pounding beers on the grass and heckling the opposition: specifically, one Dave Foyston who was ringering for Saltaire Striders on their final leg.
(A note on ringers: when we poach Nuno for our team, that’s all well and good. But obviously when Saltaire do it, they’re bang out of order, etc.)
We’d watched Wakefield go off first, with Wharfedale in very hot pursuit. Saltaire went off next, but they were on the hook for a 30-minute time penalty as one of their runners had come to grief and failed to complete an earlier leg so we didn’t need to worry too much about the perfidious Foyston lording it over us.
Pudsey Pacers Vets set off in fourth place and we took over some seven minutes in arrears. It seemed like third place was theirs to lose and, blow me, lose it they did – when we squelched hand-in-hand over the finish line 85-odd minutes later, the Pudsey pair were nowhere in sight.
It later emerged that they’d made it all the way back to the River Aire, then gone disastrously wrong, turning the last mile into a 40-minute detour that went, appropriately or otherwise, via two cemeteries. When they did pitch up, they were still comfortable winners of the vets prize. Meanwhile, Wharfedale had overhauled Wakefield to bring home the overall win.
Huge thanks to Captain Jack Wood for organising the team, and all credit to everyone on the squad for getting out and recceing their routes ahead of the day – as a team, we completed the 47-mile circuit without putting a foot wrong.
There are plenty more relays to come, so if you’re inspired by this report (and who wouldn’t be, really), sign up on this spreadsheet for the chance to be lost in some park in a suburb of Garforth – or halfway up some hill somewhere you’ve never even heard of – with some randomer that you’ve just met for the first time.
BMW Relay results
Leg 1
Jack Wood / Tom Adams 01:16:46 (1st on leg)
Leg 2
Gavin Lamb / Nick Helliwell 1:16:16 (8th)
Leg 3
Tom Lally / Matthew Kennedy 1:13:35 (11th)
Leg 4
Nuno Cesar de Sar / Nick Kealey 1:27:43 (10th)
Leg 5
Danny Thompson / Dan Mckeown 1:26:34 (4th)
Overall
Ilkley Harriers 6:40:54 (3rd team out of 51)