Thank you for supporting Roxburgh Reivers Race the Abbeys event.  I hope you enjoyed your runs and enjoyed visiting the Scottish Borders.  Roxburgh Reivers are a small club so this was a significant undertaking to organise events on successive days.  Having the WRE sprint event alongside the Urban event added prestige but required an extra level of organisation.  

Thanks to all the club members, friends of the club and relatives who helped out and contributed to a successful weekend.  Thanks also for kind comments from participants.

Lindsey Knox deserves great praise for dealing with all of the computing aspects of the event, particularly entries and results,  amongst a whole myriad of jobs she undertook.  Her eye for detail and sage advice were a great help to me.  Urban planners  Andrew Armstrong (Kelso) and Ian Maxwell (Jedburgh) both had strong visions as to how the two areas could be best used.    Kelso High School proved a great venue for the event centre for the first day, providing ample car-parking around the school and at the adjacent racecourse, good toilets and showers and plenty of space for registration and competitor pre-race preparation.  

The hall also provided some welcome respite from the heat outside!  The Jedburgh event centre gave access to a good sized car parking, a good area for warming up, was a short distance to the finish area in front of the Abbey and also was handily placed for buying coffees and ice cream!

Once the event centres and car parking areas had been identified my main task  was to bring together  helpers and equipment over the two days.  The Reivers helpers were fantastic , showing great commitment  and willingness to go the extra mile , even at a moments notice.  In some helpers’ case this was quite  literally an extra half mile up hill to the Castle Jail at very short notice.  

Perhaps unsurprisingly there were a few unexpected challenges in the course of the weekend but  helpers took those in their stride, these included: sorting out a vandalised control, rescuing a pair of blue tit chicks and, I’m told, facing a swarm of bees in the car park.