Dorset Coast Path Relay 2011 BOK Team Race Report
BOK finish in 2nd place with a near personal best time, and in doing so comfortably win the handicap competition.
On a grey and gloomy morning in Lyme Regis the 2011 Dorset Coast Path Relay teams started their 65 mile journey eastwards along the hilly coastline of Dorset. Seven teams competed this year; Bristol, Kerno, South West Junior Squad, Southampton, Wessex, Wimborne, and for the first time a non-orienteering running club, Axe Valley Runners.
After last year’s experiment of fielding a very small team of fast runners, this year we had many of those same runners plus an open invitation to everyone else in the Klub.
The BOK team comprised (in no particular order): Chris and Ben Kelsey (with Helen driving), Clive Hallett (with Jackie driving), John and Alison Simmons, Phil Warry, Richard Cottle, Esther Revell, Paul Gebbett, Matt and Grace Crane, Ketih Agmen, Mark Bown, Hanne Kinnunen, Matt Franklin (and Rachel Lee), Tim and Maya Britton (with Laura driving). Maya, 6 months, made her debut appearance for BOK by carrying the baton from the comfort of her buggy for 100m up the hill out of Lyme Regis.
This year was the Relay’s 21st birthday and to mark its coming of age a new feature was added to the format of the race. A second start was introduced mid-way along the route at Lulworth Cove; the idea being to keep all of the teams closer together throughout the day. This worked well and provided all competitors with a very exciting race especially in the latter stages of the day. It even turned out that the first team to reach the finish line didn’t win the race.
Tim Britton started the race for BOK on the one-mile dash from the Devon-Dorset border into Lyme Regis town before handing over to Maya who delivered the new blue & white with red trim baton to the rest of the team in a ‘mini relay’ stretching up the long hill out of the town.
In a devastating blow to the BOK team’s top speed, Clive fell at the first hurdle. Only six minutes into the race he slipped and strained his groin as he took the baton. He was down and out of the running for the remainder of the race.
It wasn’t long before the reigning champions Wessex had taken their position at the front. There they stayed for rest of the Part 1 of the race, with BOK, Kerno, Southampton and the Junior Squad in close competition not far behind.
Ben Kelsey took the challenge of conquering Golden Cap in the King of the Mountain leg – one of the few fixed legs of the race in which each team fields a single runner to compete for the crown. Ben recorded a very fast time of 11.35 only 10 seconds down on the record (written with a smug satisfaction that my record from 2008 still stands!), and beat the next fastest team by almost 90 seconds. All hail King Ben of the Mountain!
Matt Franklin stepped up to run Clive’s first section and he delivered the baton to the next mini-relay team at West Bay five minutes ahead of schedule.
BOK shifted between second, third, fourth and fifth place several times as the relay made its way along the hilly West Dorset coastline to Chessil Beach, inland past Hardy’s Monument, the White Horse at Osmington, and back to the coast to pass Durdle Door before reaching the end of Part 1 at Lulworth Cove.
With a second start at 1pm the challenge for each team was to reach Lulworth Cove in time to get a bit of a rest before tackling the longer and hillier stretches that followed.
Wessex were the first to arrive at Lulworth with just under 40 minutes to spare, followed by Bristol 16 minutes later, possibly the closest we’ve been to the front for a good many years. Kerno arrived only two-and-a-half minutes after BOK, with the Junior Squad ten minutes behind reaching the Part 1 finish at 12:48:52. Southampton, Axe Valley and Wimborne reached Lulworth at eight, 16 and 44 minutes after 1pm respectively.
Regardless of their arrival time at the Part 1 finish, all teams had a runner, or collection of runners ready for the Part 2 start at 1pm on the steep Bindon Hill on the east side of West Lulworth village.
Many of the individual legs in Part 2 are longer and hillier than those in Part 1. BOK, with one of the smaller teams but with a strong armoury of big guns, made the most of this by putting a succession of strong runners on this section of coastline.
Matt Crane took an almost instant lead on one of the most challenging stretches, putting significant distance between BOK and the remaining teams behind him. Matt handed over to Grace who handed over to Mark Bown at Kimmeridge Bay. By the end of Mark’s leg we had made up 15 of the 16 minutes Wessex had on us from Part 1.
The Klub managed to stay ahead of the larger teams, helped by Alison Simmons’ impressive demonstration of how to not let a 1:1 downhill slope slow you down, and Keith Agmen knocking two minutes off his King of the Coast leg time. With Clive still hobbling, his second leg was taken by Matt Crane, keen to experience the chips, ice cream and dog walkers of Swanage waterfront.
BOK reached the finish line first shortly after 4pm and had an anxious wait to see if we had built a big enough Part 2 lead over Wessex to take the title from the regular champions. Refusing to break from tradition, however, Wessex managed to retain their lead and finished 10 minutes after BOK did, thus claiming overall victory by 5 minutes 33 seconds. Wessex’s total running time of 7hrs 41min 1sec gave them their fifth win in a row.
A little over six minutes after Wessex, Southampton’s first finisher arrived followed seconds later by Kerno’s first finisher. Within a minute two more SOC runners hit the finish line recording their team’s finish time just 24 seconds ahead of Kerno’s next two runners. In under four minutes’ time the first three Junior Squad runners arrived at the finish.
After a brief half-hour interlude six more runners were sighted in the distance rounding the corner of Shell Bay. Less than two minutes separated the last two teams at the finish. Axe Valley Runners, making their debut appearance in the relay with only eight runners, a quarter the size of the winning team, just beat Wimborne to the end of the beach.
The final combined Part 1 and Part 2 running times put the seven teams in the same order as they were at the end of Part 1.
Wessex / 7:41:01Bristol / 7:46:34
Cornwall / 8:06:02
SW Junior Squad / 8:19:03
Southampton / 8:34:23
Axe Valley Runners / 9:16:55
Wimborne / 9:46:46
The results of the handicap competition, calculated from team size, age and gender are more pleasing to the BOK eye:
Running time / Handicap / Handicap timeBristol / 7:46:34 / 02:14:00 / 10:00:34
Southampton / 8:34:23 / 01:53:00 / 10:27:23
Axe Valley Runners / 9:16:55 / 01:14:00 / 10:30:55
Cornwall / 8:06:02 / 03:00:00 / 11:06:02
SW Junior Squad / 8:19:03 / 02:51:00 / 11:10:03
Wessex / 7:41:01 / 03:32:00 / 11:13:01
Wimborne / 9:46:46 / 02:19:00 / 12:05:46