Hyde Park Relays - 9th February 2008

With temparatures pushing over 15 degrees and the sun shining, the conditions for Hyde Park 2008 were perfect for some good times and enthusiastic spectating.

The pressure was on 14AC to snatch their third consecutive Guest Team victory and there was the usual rivalry with the university for who would come out on top.

There was a depleted turn out for 14AC, however with the team of Martin, Matt, Anna and Andy, we could at least field a team, albeit if there were a couple of us who had to run twice and therefore give us the chance of maintaining our title.

Andy was up first, claiming not to have ben running for the last couple of weeks, however judging by the ever bleaching of his hair, it suggested that there had been plenty of swimming to compensate. His time of 16:10 placed 14AC within the top 10 after first leg, from which Martin took off.

Martin had to make the tough choice of watching his home country battle it out against Scotland, or contribute to 14AC's battle against the Uni. It was a no brainer and while Wales were edging ahead in Cardiff, Martin was runinng round the Serpentime clawing back time off the Uni. His 16:50 time was a p.b. for the course and he passed over to Matt who took on third leg.

When Matt started the race, his mileage for the day was already pushing well over 30, having had a small warm up with a cycle from Brentwood to London. Some say that this could act as a disadvantage, however by this stage Machine's engine was properly warmed up and ready for some overtaking. Needless to say he came up trumps finishing in an impressive 17:28.

Despite the crowd numbers starting to push several thousand and spill over on to the course, Anna produced a fine run, weaving through the pedestrians at a lightening place and maintaining our first guest team position. In her debut on the men's course, she recorded an impressive 21:07 to hand over to Andy.

It is hard to say whether doing two legs is an honour or an inconvenience, however with the potential prize at stake, Andy and Martin had to give it what they had left in the closing stages of the race. Both had solid runs finisnihing in 16:59 and 17:33 respectively. This gave the total for the day as 1:46:10 and enabled us to retain the First Guest Team honour.

Imperial College excelled themselves this year, not only by replacing the french bread, nutella and 1p sweets with soup, jacket pototes and the like, but also by going well over board on the prizes. We picked up a large number of trophies, medals and beers at the prize giving for our efforts of the day, and proudly returned home 2008 champions.