On a glorious (but chilly) day just before the end of the year the Ranelagh Harriers Henty Relay race was held in Richmond Park. The relay consists of teams of three runners - one fast, one medium and one slow - running six laps of Sidmouth Wood. The fast runner runs three laps in total, the medium two laps and the slow runner one lap only. Laps can be run in any order although the suggested order is Fast, Medium, Fast, Slow, Medium, Fast. Each lap distance is 1.38 miles.

I (David) gave myself a rather long ‘warm-up’ earlier in the day - 7.3 miles running round Richmond Park! I didn’t want to just do this one relay race today so planned to add it onto the end of a longer run.

We all had to meet in the Ranelagh clubhouse at 11:30am to register our names and wait for the ‘super computer’ to decide which teams to put people in. 30 people took part, making 10 teams of 3.

In my team I was the ‘fast’ runner, a young lady called Anna was the ‘medium’ runner and good friend Kirsty was the ‘slow’ runner. My first lap was with all the other fast runners and it pushed me hard - I ran the slightly shorter first lap in 7:54 (just under 6 minute mile pace). My second and third laps were run in 8:31 and 8:53 respectively. Team wise our final position was 5th overall, just under 3 minutes behind the winning team (and 24 seconds from 4th place).

Sharon was the ‘slow’ runner in her team and their overall position was 3rd. Sharon had a good solid run and was happy with her performance.

Overall I really enjoyed this event - its a great little piece of post Christmas fun and encourages runners of all ability (the youngest runner was 7 years old!) to take part. Full results can be found at the Ranelagh Harriers website.