Thames Hare & Hounds Alumni Race

The Old Salopian Hunt fielded an enthusiastic team of four runners in this annual inter-schools alumni event.

Its date is designed to provide runners with a more relaxed alternative to Christmas shopping, though the pace at the front of the race was far from relaxed. Unfortunately none of the OSH runners were close enough to witness it at first hand!

As last year our first runner home was Charles Tongue in a highly respectable time of 31min 38 secs for the hilly and muddy 5 mile course. His was a particularly strong performance given he started after all the other runners had got half way up the first field, having arrived late, and spent the race overtaking nearly two thirds of the field.

Second home was V40 Mark Holloway, fresh(ish) back from the US where he ran the New York marathon. Mark was 61st in a time of 33:34. Our team was rounded out by the former Ridgemount pair of David Thomas, 84th in 36:28, and Andrew Christophers, 107th in 42:21.

Because the veteran categories require 3 runners to close out a team, the only categories we completed full teams in were the open category, where we were 13th, and the V40, where we were 9th. The winning team looked, and probably was, half the age of most of our runners!