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Regensburg, Germany
Sunday 5th June 2011

Sunday 05.06.11 Regensburg, Germany

What a weekend! After arriving in Regensburg with little in the way of disruption but fatigued from an early start, we were greeted with, what now seems a rather amusing scenario. The hotel had us all booked into double rooms...not twins, doubles! Apparently athletes from other countries don't mind sharing beds with each other but the thought of Leon & Harry or big Lloyd & the comparatively fragile looking Aki spooning in a German hotel room is fuel for entertainment...except for when a whole team is standing tired & hungry in the hotel reception after a long journey, being told that the hotel is fully booked.

Eventually, with all logistical complications resolved, we headed down to the track for a light recovery session before returning to the hotel where Pierre & I rolled our sleeves up & worked through the team's soft tissue requirements.

On Sunday, we headed down to the track in the afternoon with 3 of the girls & 2 of the guys competing in the individual 100m heats before the relays. Jeanette, Laura & Asha all won their heats before securing a 1, 2 & 4 for GB girls in the final. James Ellington also had a successful outcome finishing 1st in both heat & final, whilst Leon laboured to a 3rd place in the heat & decided to sit out the final in favour of the 200m.

...& then came the relays! The reason we were all here...we were looking good with the promising individual displays behind us. The girls were first to go but an unannounced change of schedule led to a farcical scamper to the start with the warm ups barely complete. Jeanette got away strongly & the change over to Anyika was slick enough to see an unassailable lead built up by the third change to Laura. Then the plan went out of the window, with Laura & Abi getting the timing all out on the last change over & the baton going to ground...the frustration was compounded by the fact that the lead was so commanding that they could probably have stopped, handed over the goods, before starting again.

So it was left to the boys to save face for Team GB. Debutant Danny Talbot got a steady start, handing over to Craig who consolidated before building a short advantage over the German team leading into the second change. Smoothly accomplished James then kicked the baton from hand barely two steps later & once again the GB baton bounced across the track, with Harry left contemplating a weekend free from action.

Abi did her best to lift spirits by winning the individual 200m but all in all the weekend's objectives were left unfulfilled. So to summarise, a useful weekend for the girls who competed individually & also for James but a little disappointing overall with Switzerland being the venue to put things right at the beginning of July.

Results of the meet can be reviewed below:

http://www.leichtathletik.de/results/3837_regensburg_040611.htm

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