ROUNDHILL ROMP

The Roundhill Romp always claims a few scalps. This year it was more than metaphorical, with several bloodied heads and bodies waiting for attention at the ambulance ranks, including several Flyers. Dan probably doesn’t blame his asthma attack on the rigours of the route. Just as well Karen had a spare inhaler though! The course did play a part in Steve CY’s ankle sprain, Stella’s header into thorns and flint on the wooded return section and Jackie’s three point landing. Stella sustained multiple grazes and bruises which she told me looked much worse than they felt and were restored by John’s strong tea. Jackie recovered well enough to do the Climping social run two days later. All four finished well. It is a hazardous course, this year made more so with the beautiful evening’s dazzling, low, blinding light. Steyning painstakingly painted white lines on every tree root, but keeping footing remains tricky. Apart from restricting the numbers, which may help marginally, there is little more that Steyning can do to improve safety on this demanding, scenic and popular race. I guess we all know what we let ourselves in for as multi terrain runners.

The Roundhill field grows in number each year, and it is clear that it was targeted for maximum effort by the big clubs. The top six in the race all fielded more than twenty five, I am sure the highest since the WSFR League formed 26 years ago, and 4 clubs scoring more than 81 points is pretty unusual. The field of 470 had a quality of runners higher than the norm as well, making point scoring significantly more difficult. Our 10 and 9 pointers certainly had to work hard for them! Flyers good 81 gave us fourth on the night and we unsurprisingly slipped 3 points behind Steyning on their home patch. A long way to go and still all to play for.

Keith got to the start with a few minutes to spare and ran a storming race; Nadine too had another excellent run followed by Jan; Dan had to battle with his breathing and did remarkably well; whilst Steve, Adrian and Chris packed well for their 9 points. It was an evening of Flyer’s firsts! Welcome Andy C and Jemma for their first race with us; James to his first for a few years; Jack and Andrew S to their first WSFRL race; and John K to his first this year! We hope you make it a habit! Another first was Jill finishing last Flyer, but as she had a broken arm it was pretty brave even to start on this course!

In the U15 race Leah and Nina had excellent runs. It is a tough challenge for our Flyers juniors to compete with girls and boys considerably older than themselves, but Leah continues to take this in her stride, with a very good overall 17th for 8 points. Nina is even younger, and once again ran extremely well to finish 35th for 6 points. The two girls have quite different but very effective styles and are clearly natural athletes. What will you both be like when you are 15?! Still enjoying it, we hope.