THERE was plenty of excitement to be had last weekend as athletes from Dudley Kingswinford Running Club went toe-to-toe with the cream of the local clubs in the Midlands Road Relays at Sutton Park.

With the race run over 12 stages throughout the afternoon, with four long stages of around five and a half miles and eight short legs of a fraction over three miles, there were plenty of miles to run and plenty of teams to pit themselves against from the Midlands area, including the far flung reaches of Stoke, Nottingham, Leicester, Rugby, Northampton and Bristol .

Notts AC, although placed in second position after the first leg, took the lead on the second leg and never relinquished first place for the remainder of the afternoon.

The East Midlands club finishing clear winners by nearly five minutes in a total time of 4.00.28 from Bristol and West AC, who were runners up in 4.05.04.

The best battle of the afternoon was for bronze as local rivals Tipton Harriers and Wolverhampton and Bilston leap frogged each other with only a single second separating the best of the Black Country going into the last leg. Wolves just getting ahead when it mattered taking third place by less than a minute.

Although never troubling the leaders, DK did themselves proud finishing in 44th place out of the 73 teams listed.

James Wright leading them out on the first long leg with a time of 34.08, Brain Preston running 21.10 on leg two, Dave Norman recording 34.25 on the third, Ben Foster moving the team up eight places with a short fast 17.10, Richard Tonks ran the fifth leg in 38.21, Matt Biggs clocked 18.54 for the sixth leg, Paul Richards ran 36.36 in the seventh, Simon Blizzard recorded 21.37 on eighth, John Andrews 23.28 on ninth, Graham Wildgoose 20.36 on 10th, Pete Hood 21.09 on 11th and Gary Bonner brought the team homing running 19.39 on the 12th and final leg.