HARWICH Runners entered five teams in the popular and well-organised Ekiden relay, hosted by Ipswich Jaffa.

This is possibly the biggest local running event in the calendar – a six-leg relay covering the full marathon distance which, this year, attracted the biggest-ever field of 170 teams.

Harwich’s ladies V35 team performed really well to place third out of 12 teams.

Madeline Lewis got the team off to a really strong start, completing the opening 7.2km leg in a time of 32 minutes and 54 seconds.

Tracy Keeble kept the team in contention with a good 5km leg of 24m 39s and their position was strengthened by Claudine Tisbury, on the first of the two 10km legs, as she zipped round in 43m 9s.

The middle 5km leg was completed by Penny Barrington, followed by another good 10km stint by Becky McCorquodale.

Sharan Rider brought the team home with a final 5km leg of 23m 2s to give the team an overall finish time of 3h 16m 17s.

The male vets team (MV40) also produced a good display, finishing fifth out of the 16 teams in that age group in a total time of 2h 47m 43s.

There were three good 5km legs, with Jason Meachen (20m 15s), Richard Flutter (20m 13s) and Bill Haining (20m 0s) all adding to a strong opening run from Justin Burls.

The team’s position in fifth was confirmed by two excellent 10km legs from Robin Brookes (38m 32s) and Mark Lloyd (38m 23s).

There was also a team in the men’s open category, which had Justin Cooper-Keeble on the opening leg, with Aaron Rudkin and Johnny Zeeuw both completing the 10km stages.

In-form Will Roxby-Clarke produced an excellent 5km leg of 21m 41s, with the remaining 5km legs being picked up by Dennis Warner and Steve Kent.

The team finished the distance in a good 3h 14m 24s.

Ipswich Harriers took the honours in this category with the fastest combined time of the day in a little over 2h 23m.

There were also two equally-weighted mixed teams running against each other.

A team led by Vicky McCrea, Laura Parker, Michelle Greenfield and Sabine Klapper performed well.

Kieran Callaghan ran the second 10km leg for this team before handing over to Katie Holmes for the final 5km leg.

In the meantime, the other team had seen Sally Gillam, Ali Bardell, Miranda Rayner, Louise Papworth and Edward McCreadie in very close attendance.

It was this team’s final leg runner that decided things with Jonathan Burls’ 5km time of 23m 2s giving them an overall finish time of 4h 21s – just 80 seconds ahead of their club-mates.