VII CROSS - Subida a la ’Fatima’ - 9200m(road) - 8th May 1993 - Pinoso, SPAIN.

The evening was hot for the Pinoso hill race on May 8th but the Spen warm weather training squad was out in force. Entered for the mighty Spen were Jeff Hornby, Paul Dobson, Richard Lee and myself, Myles Chandler. The gun went at 7.15 p.m. and Jeff soon placed himself in the leading pack on the opening road laps, before the two main laps which went up a hill and back down. To quote Jeff. “the start was not very fast”. Well it was fast enough for me and I soon realized that a prize was out of the question as I felt very sluggish.

At the top of the first climb the battle to be ’champion’ had become a two horse race, with local star Juan Sanchez providing a stiff challenge to Spen hero Jeff Hornby.
Paul Dobson was well placed in 5th which was good to say his decision to run was left until that afternoon. ’Prize hunting’ Richard Lee was in about 25th, but with juniors in front that final 15th place senior trophy was still within his grasp! I was out of the reckoning in about 30th place. Things stayed like that on the second lap and on the sprint in, Hornby was beaten by Sanchez and had to settle for the title of ‘sub-champion’ but his trophy took up half of his return luggage capacity - It’s that BIG - honest. In 4th was Paco, who is in John Rawlins’ training group and in 5th was Spen’s Paul Dobson, also gaining a massive prize. Just out of the prizes (16th senior and 19th overall) was Richard “I just missed out on a trophy by one b****** place” Lee and he was gutted / suicidal after the race. I came about 27th and was surprised to get a goody bag containing wine, water and salt!

At the end of the day fun was had by all and I must say that the Spanish know how to lay on an enjoyable road race. If it was like that here (free entry, big crowds, loads of prizes, smaller fields) I could even get to like ’mind numbing’ road racing. The holiday was better than expected and I think we all returned fitter and browner than when we went, except Gary who remained drip white despite constant sunbathing and contracted some kind of mild disease, ’feared leprosy’ to quote Richard!