Mrs E's Big Wheeze

Last Sunday saw the running of the inaugural Mrs E’s Big Wheeze and the Honiton runners who took part were relieved to find that the morning was slightly cooler than the weather had been during the preceding week. The headquarters of this 6 mile race was at Mrs Ethelston’s Primary School in Uplyme and the route was a mixture of road, woodland and tracks. The race was won in the incredible time of 36 minutes 13 seconds by visiting holidaymaker Tim Harley of Nottingham AC. It’ll be a long time before that record is broken; he was almost 2 minutes ahead of Matt Clist of Axe Valley Runners who finished 2nd. The first runner back for Honiton was Chris Entwistle who finished 5th in exactly 42 minutes. He was followed by Richard Harvey in 8th place in 45:27. Predictably, Steve Davey was next back in 10th place with a time of 46:26. Young Henry Riddle was just 2 places behind in 47:02. Suzanne Spiller was first lady overall and winner of the ‘Queen of the Hill’ collecting a gorgeous bunch of flowers and strawberry wine courtesy of the sponsors. She finished in 14th place in 47:26. Bruce Strawbridge and Simon Spiller came back in 16th and 17th place respectively with Bruce finishing in 48:44 and Simon just 10 seconds later. They had been just feet apart from each other for most of the race and only lost Judy Davey during the last mile. Judy finished as 2nd lady overall and 19th place in 50:02. Both Judy and Steve were first in their age categories winning a bottle each. John Burgess completed the Honiton line up but he suffered with the heat and a recent cold. He finished in 32nd place in 59:21. There were 42 finishers but hopefully next year there will be more as everyone who took part thought it was a cracking event with great marshals and brilliant organisation.