Sunday's bright sun and gentle breeze were very welcome to those of us who remember the strong, freezing headwinds of the previous two runnings of this event. Another welcome change, the date being only a couple of days after Full Term, meant that we were able to enter two teams, including students for the first time.  Twelve runners took part: 3 undergraduates, 2 graduates, 1 supervisor, 2 staff and 4 fellows.

William Winter got Beagles 1 off to an excellent start, leading the race down the hill from Ely Cathedral onto the riverbank and finishing his stint in 4th place at 6m24 per mile.  Paolo Natali scorched his way from Dimmocks Cote to Clayhythe at 5m40 per mile across rough grass and with several styles to climb, and put us into the overall lead.  Chris Austin set off along the riverbank closely pursued by sinewy men including a triathlon international, but held almost all of his own and got us to Jesus Green in 4th place at 6m54 per mile.  Jakob Foerster ran an excellent stint back to Clayhythe at 6m12 per mile, but found on arriving that no-one was there to take over.  Undismayed he set off into the fifth stint only to find the same problem at Upware.  So again he set off and completed the run all the way to Ely, eighteen miles at a good deal better than seven minutes per mile, mostly across rough grass: we don't know his exact time because the race officials refused to time him and none of us was there at the finish*.  Had he but known, only a couple of minutes behind at Clayhythe first Charlie Ferguson (7m07) and then Helen Mort (7m04) were trying to catch him:  Charlie'sofficial time is misleadingly long because the two dead minutes after Jakob arrived at Clayhythe were charged to his account.  Beagles 1 achieved an official time (from the start until Helen arrived at Ely) of 3h52 placing sixth out of 47 teams and winning the Organisation Category with over ten minutes in hand against the Centre for Mathematical Sciences 1.

After the finish in the Cathedral Close at Ely: 

Alan Winter, Nick Gay, William Winter, Brenda Bradley, Helen Mort, Matthew Burke;

Martin Goodhand, Charlie Ferguson, Jakob Foerster;

and not in the photograph: Chris Austin, Paolo Natali, Richard Clarke.

Some way behind, the fellows on Beagles 2 were being led by the student members of the team to an overall time of 4h30 and to fourth place in the Organisation Category (19th overall).  Outstanding were Martin Goodhand who ran from Clayhythe to Cambridge at 6m33 and Matthew Burke who ran the long, difficult sixth stint at 6m30 per mile.  Richard Clarke put in an excellent run at 7m57 on stint 5 and Brenda Bradley, Nick Gay and Alan Winter ran in the low to mid eight minutes per mile.

 We finished with lunch together at Ely where we talked of next year's race.

*Jakob tells me he timed himself at 1h58m (6m31 per mile over 18.1 miles), getting us to Ely in fourth place.  If he had been allowed to run both ways for us he would have done the distance that Alan Turing undertook regularly as a training run (and at getting on for Turing's marathon time)!

ATW  with thanks to Charley Barker and Rod Baron/Tony Hall for free use of their photographs.