TAVISTOCK Athletic Club's Jim Cole continued his welcome return to road racing after long-term injury with a flying start to July. On the back of victories from Newquay to Bristol in June, Jim began July with a busy weekend of racing.

It has been several years since a team from Tavistock AC last challenged for first prize in the biggest local road relay — the Erme Valley Relay at Ivybridge. This year 65 teams of four runners took part. Each leg of the 2.5 mile course consists of a long downhill start, undulating flat section, steep hill and long run-in to the finish before hand-over to the next runner.

Richard Drage ran the opening leg for Tavistock carving his way through the tiring field in 13m29s, 30 seconds behind the lead battle between Tamar Trotters and defending champions Torbay and hot on the heels of third paced Exmouth Harriers. In a strong second leg, Chris Champion was in third place but was unable to prevent Torbay in first and Tamar Trotters in second stretching their leads to 70 and 40 seconds respectively.

On the third leg Tony Symons made a little headway on the leaders, who once again swapped positions, finally handing over to Jim Cole with with Tamar Trotters 50 seconds distant and Torbay closer, at 35 seconds.

Few could have anticipated the blistering performance Cole was to put into the closing leg. After rapidly closing down the relatively slow last leg runner from Tamar Trotters, he then set about catching the distant leader, now from Torbay. Cole's strength on the hill was to prove the deciding factor, catching and passing the leader at the top of the last climb before moving away in the final half mile to give Tavistock a stunning victory, 12 seconds ahead of Torbay and 17 seconds ahead of third place team Farah Away as well as breaking the individual course record in the process!

Two days later Jim was on the start line for the inaugural Launceston Tough 10 Miler race on a blazing hot Sunday morning. Despite suffering with a torn rib muscle from a riding incident the previous day, Cole was still able to remain out of sight in the lead, returning to the finish in Coronation Park with an advantage of almost 2 minutes over Woods to set a time of 56minutes 22 seconds.