Calderdale Way Relay 2015

It’s the 4th consecutive year that HPH have entered Britains biggest club run off road event.  90 teams (1080 runners) took part this year, with Hyde Park Harriers taking 3 teams.  Out of the 3 teams and 36 runners, 21 of us were running the Calderdale Way Relay for the first time.

By Pennine standards, the weather was excellent for running on the day.  Cold, plenty of cloud, and a bit of sunshine for legs 5 and 6.  All the hard work (+beer/pie stops) over the previous 8 weeks of weekend and work night recce trips paid off on the day, with some excellent results for the Harriers.  There were quite a few running pairs from other clubs out there on Sunday who took the wrong route, which is easy to do in the wilderness of Calderdale.

With all 36 Hyde Park Harriers completing their legs (probably making us the best represented team from the Leeds area?)…we managed to finish 16th (our highest ever finish…previous best was 28th), 63rd (36th mixed team), and 83rd.

We also broke some HPH club records for individual legs (1,3,5, and 6), and a new set of mixed team records (3, 4, and 6).  Full results on the Halifax Harriers website.

Calderdale is a bit of a challenge from a running and a driving perspective, so well done to everyone who ran a leg, and thanks to everyone that provided transport.  Especially Tom Pollard who stepped in at the last minute to help out with the driving!  Also, a big thanks to the reserve runners who helped out when we hit a minor injury crisis (with a week to go).  Fantastic effort.

Hopefully everyone enjoyed the running and relay team camaraderie on the day- and over the last few months of practice trips.

Now you all have whistles, compass, body cover etc…we’ll see you for some of the 2015 fell championship races starting in June!

(…..some excellent photos on the Woodentops site for legs 5 and 6 if you’d like to see Hyde Park Harriers vaulting stiles).