On the 6th of April 2008 the Trafford AC Senior Mens team embarked upon a magnificent adventure, they travelled to Catterick, just North of Leeds to compete in the 2008�North of England Mens 12 Stage Road Relays Championships. The team had some last minute withdrawals due to different circumstances and were already missing some athletes due to warm weather training and injury, but this did not stop them from achieving the unthinkable!!

The race started off with a long leg (legs 1, 4, 7 and 10 were the long legs of around 5.5mile) where Adrian Holliday brought the team in at 10th place, next it was Blake Ellis turn to run, he moved the team up 1 place to 9th place and handed over to Danny Brocklehurst (me) who brought the team back in 6th and handed over to Alex O'Gorman who ran very well despite the weather starting to take a turn for the worse. He handed over to Michael Sawrey who further improved to 5th place with a solid run, next it was Michael Hunt who although he dropped 2 places to 7th still had a very good run as the weather had turned into some what of a blizzard, Daz talbot was the next to experience the horrible weather and took the team back up into 6th place. Lee Turner was next out, storming through the field to run the fastest short stage of the day by the Trafford team taking the team�into 4th and releasing Tim Egerton who had a very islotaed run and did very well to close on the teams in front. This meant when Tom Minshull took over in 4th he just had a glimpse of the 3 teams infront of him and he set off on his mission to close them down, he did so bringing the team in just a mere 14 seconds behind 3rd place. Chris Leigh was next to show his determination for the club, coming in as a last minute replacement and doing a very good job of keeping the club in contention for a medal in 4th place. Then it was left to ian Salisbury who grasped the bronze medal away from local rivals Sale and capped a magnificent day at the office in fine style!!!

Despite the horrible conditions, receiving the medal made it all justified, an excellent performance all round from every member of the team. It may not have been a gold medal winning display but we were not even aiming to be in the top 5 never mind the top 3 due to injury and other crisis.

W hope to try and repeat this feat next year, but for the mean time we shall all concentrate on our individual efforts over the summer after coming 15th in the National 12 Stage Road Relays with even more people missing from the team.

I hope you enjoyed reading this.