A CHEERFUL team of eight veteran athletes left Bury for Sutton Park, Birmingham on Saturday.

Sutton Park is to road running what Wembley was to soccer or Wimbledon to tennis.

It has housed national relay championships for decades and the likes of Dave Bedford, Brendan Foster, Seb Coe, Steve Cram and Paula Radcliffe have all graced the famous parkland course.

To follow in those footsteps, albeit somewhat slower, was well worth the journey alone.

A total of 68 teams began the race which requires each of the eight team members to run the same three mile leg. While beautifully set on the Sutton heathland the course is a tough circuit with the first mile uphill.

Dave Cole volunteered to contest the first leg and, no respecter of reputations, he scorched round the first leg in 15 minutes 30 seconds to bring Bury home in eighth place.

Dave's time proved to be the 34th fastest of the day from the 544 competitors.

This lofty position ahead of many much larger clubs such as Belgrave, Salford, Sheffield and Oxford was never going to be maintained and next man out Dave McConville had the unenviable task of trying to hold onto the position.

He maintained his concentration well, as several runners inevitably passed him, to finish in a time of 17 minutes 37 seconds and handed on to Alan Healy who was competing in an age group below him.

Alan ran his leg at level six minute mile pace (18 minutes 9 seconds).

Dave Archer was next away and ran an identical time to Dave McConville (17 minutes 37 seconds) to hand over to Geoff Little in 44th place, a more realistic spot for the Bury team.

Geoff was third fastest for the team (17 minutes 20 seconds) as he improved one place before Pete Bates went one better (16 mins 57 seconds) to improve five places.

The final two legs were completed by Roger Morley (19 minutes 16 seconds) and Ken Smith (20 minutes 32 seconds) to ensure a highly respectable days work to finish 43rd.

IT was a satisfied team that travelled home and rightly so. They had held their own in the national arena beating such huge clubs as Belgrave and Liverpool Harriers and, more locally, Bolton.