NEVIS CYCLE & TRIATHLON CLUB

The day started as Stanley and I and Seamoss, our bus driver, collected the Nevis crew from the boat, they were, Wendy Brear, Dionne Smithen, Frank Ashley, and Vaden Jones who were going as runners and our supporters. We drove to Verchilds where the race was supposed to start and the rain came down heavily! We were told then that the distance from town ( where the race ended ) to Verchilds was 7 miles not 6.2 so we knew we had an 11k race ahead of us. Andy Brear, who had come to support, changed his mind and ended up doing the run and of course made great time! At 9am there were no organizers there at all, no tent, no signs, just a group of athletes from Grenada, shortly after race organizers started to arrive and we got numbered. The "ladies" went to find a bathroom which turned out to be a nearby cluster of bushes as there were no public restrooms anywhere near by! By now the sun was hot and we were desperate to get going. The Prime minister himself started the race running a short distance himself and then jumping in a car to meet the athletes at the end!
The race had a LOT of hills and was made quite tough by the fact that only 3 water stations were there through the whole course, no markers to let us know what distance we had covered and very very few supporters as the weather went form wet to hot to wet to hot....
The race changed for me at 41 minutes, where I met 2 girls from Nevis both 12 years old, we ran together for a while until one became quite badly dehydrated, and not knowing where the next water station was this was quite a problem, I got her hydrated at the next stop and walked with her a good while. She asked me not to leave her and I promised I wouldn't, I told her she would make the finish line before me, and with a gentle push down church road she did. It was a sad situation as both her and her friend were running in socks with no adult supervision and both terrified they would not finish.
Cutting a long story short...... I finished in 1 hour and 6 minutes and 11 seconds which is 37 seconds faster than Nevis 10k so a great time for me on a much harder course and I know I could have done much better if it had not been for my little friend. I don't regret helping her though, as I would hope someone would have done the same had it been one of my kids, no one passed us so I may have had a better personal time but the end result will be the same.
We all ended up with a nice medal, a leather cheque and credit card holder, a t shirt and a cup!