What a disaster! Thanks to some idiot planner in Reading Councils roads division, they closed the key A329 road in and out of Reading (next to the Cemetery Junction famous for being the title of the Ricky Gervais film) from Wednesday this week, leaving the whole place gridlocked. I couldn’t even get out of the car park, despite leaving at 4:30pm! It was never possible to make the time up after that, and I arrived home at 7:15pm for a race that was starting 10 miles away at 7:30pm. Lesson learned – always have the telephone numbers of the others entered as I was the one collecting the numbers! In future, when I ask you that, you know why! So things were chaotic, as this note from Rob Thornton implies:
As the runners were on top of the hill before we caught them up (we heard the starting hooter when we were on the way back from the tennis club), I think we started at least 3 minutes after the rest. We faffed about putting our numbers on, etc plus we had a lack of enthusiasm. The officials had taken down the start flags and we passed them up the track a couple of hundred yards. Could have been almost 5 mins.
However at least we had ‘some’ results! Well done to all those who took part despite the organisational failure. I’d say ‘heads will roll’ but, er, I’m a bit attached to it. SORRY!!!
226 – Rob Thornton – 37:42
269 – Brian Turrell – 40:01
320 – Mick Dee – 43:55
