Winchester & District AC’s senior women’s team has secured a major championship title.

The nail-biting victory in the Southern Six Stage Road Relays at Cyclopark in Kent was the club’s first victory in the competition since 2006.

WADAC competed regularly in the event during the Noughties and were runners-up behind local rivals Aldershot in 2009.

The runners battled high winds throughout this year’s event, held for the second year running at Cyclopark near Gravesend, Mel Wilkins, returning to her best form after a difficult year, set the tone with a superb 15:28 third-place run, 18 seconds off leaders Herne Hill.

Next up was Hayley Munn, who ran one of the three-lap longer legs in 23:27 to keep the team in contention in fifth.

Then triathlete Simone Dailey ran a magnificent 15:10, to take WADAC up to second.

Thames Valley had by now opened a 90-second lead. Winchester’s fourth-leg runner was Lorna Russell, who ran an excellent 23:16, leaving WADAC third.

But Thames’ Tracy Barlow, training partner of all the Winchester women, had gone even faster.

Leaders Thames’ were now two-and-a-half minutes ahead of WADAC.

No matter. India Lee, European Champion Triathlete and a veteran of the 2009 silver-medal WADAC team, stormed to the day’s fastest leg (14:23), cutting Thames’ lead to 44 seconds at the end of leg five.

Vicky Gill, a member of the Aldershot team that beat Winchester in 2009, passed the Thames runner in the last lap of the final leg to record a time of 15:32, completing a stunning WADAC victory by just 16 seconds.

Coach Nick Anderson said: “In an event as fiercely competitive as the Southern Road Relays, the only way you stand any chance of winning is if your whole team perform to their best level on the same day, which is pretty hard to achieve. But that’s exactly what this team did.

"Hopefully it’s the first major trophy of many for our current crop of endurance runners”.