Caroline Hoyte (Arena 80) lifted Sussex spirits at the South Of England 12-Stage Road Relay Championships at Milton Keynes.

There was a poor turn out from Sussex clubs but that did not worry Hoyte, a recent winner of the prestigious 10km road race at Eastleigh.

She took the third of the 6x3-mile legs for Arena 80 after Vicki Boyle and Liz Lumber had finished 23rd and 19th.

Hoyte lifted the squad an amazing 12 places to hand over in seventh. Her lap time of 18min.25sec was the second fastest of the day behind South London's Natalie Harvey.

Fi Linskey and Orla Gedin dropped to 16th and 18th before veteran Chris Naylor lifted Arena to 13th on the final leg.

Brighton and Hove, the county road relay champions, and Crawley, the county cross country champions, did not appear so it was left to the Phoenix and Arena 80 to fly the Sussex flag in the men's 12 stage race.

Tim Parkin made a steady start for Phoenix on the opening leg to finish 38th from more than 100 teams, Rich O'Neill moved up to 30th on lap two and was followed by Matt Sorokin 25th, veteran Colin Simpson 28th, Fred T'sjoen 25th, Nigel Herron 32nd, Tom Naylor 22nd (25min.35sec),Paul Wishart 23rd, Gary Judd 22nd, Mark Davison, veteran Paul Collicut and Russell Pittam, all in 26th.

Andy Robinson (Horsham), running for the Newham team, held on to second on the penultimate leg (24min.21sec), the sixth fastest time of the day.

Charlotte Best and Elaine Wells were in fine form at the early season tack meeting at Crawley.

Best notched up an impressive double. She won a hard-fought 400m from clubmate Wells, both were credited with 57.4sec, having earlier dominated the 800m (2min.17.5sec).

Wells was a convincing winner of the 200m (25.7sec), which equals her fastest of last season.