Masters Road Relay 2011

Updated with official times, positions and more photos added to the album courtesy of Kenny Phillips. Plenty of photos of the Harriers on the excellent www.roadrunpics.com web site.
A record field of masters runners faced a bitterly cold 3.7 mile lap  of Strathclyde Park loch and the odd unappreciative pedestrian in today's LSK Masters Road Relay Championship. The separation of the men's race into an M35 and M50 team category for the first time certainly boosted the numbers and possibly also the quality with many of the top M50 + runners in evidence this year.

We fielded a strong ladies team with Genevieve Freeman leading us out in a time of 27:06, an improvement of 5 seconds on last year, handing over to Mary Goldsmith. Mary had somehow managed to avoid running this one in previous years and so was facing somewhat unknown territory, especially on the undulating back section of the course. Mary ran a fine 27:26 before Frances Maxwell set off on the final leg. Frances covered the course in 26:04, 12 seconds faster than last year. The final team position was 10th.

This is the first time we have been able to put an M50 team into any event and each of the 4 men tasked with this performed well. M60 Stuart Waugh was first off for the M50 team and ran an excellent 23:56, only 4 seconds outside last years time. Gerry Mullen hasn't been racing much but was known to be in good form in training and did not disappoint with a time of 24:35. Kenny Leinster has been tempted off the hills onto the roads again and faced a much flatter relay than last weekend (Devil's Burden!) setting a debut time of 24:07. Andy Henderson put in another strong performance but just missed out on last year's time by 11 seconds, finishing in 23:52. The team finished 7th in a very strong M50 field.

We had three teams in the M35+ category. Colin Freeman led the first team out for the second year in a row, set off at a more conservative pace this year but still finished in a similar time of 21:55, only 8 seconds outside last year. Colin Bain made his relay debut and set a very impressive time of 21:17 on leg 2. Eddie Reid is getting back to form after going through a bad spell late last year. His time of 22:30 was only 17 seconds down on last year. Martin Duthie made it to the course this year which guaranteed that he would be faster. Unfortunately some watch stopping difficulties mean that he could only estimate his time to be an impressive 20:50 (confirmed) bringing the team up from 10th to 8th in the M35 category.

The second M35 team comprised Mark Saez, a relay first timer, on leg 1 (23:38), Graham Lindsay who felt that he misjudged the early pace on leg 2 which would have affected his time (25:38), the timeless David Herbertson (24:12) on leg 3 and the equally timeless Scot Hill (23:42) on the last leg. The third team was incomplete but nevertheless, George Stewart put everything in to the first leg with a finishing time of 25:31, 1 second faster than last year but some minutes outside his "bronze medal winning time" of a few years back. Colin Banks had a strong finish to leg 2 with a time of 25:43, giving Russell Couper some runners to compete against on leg 3. Unusually Russell failed to start his watch until some distance after the start, so his estimated time of 30 to 31 is in the same ball park as last year's time and he certainly appeared to be running well. The official time for Russell was 30:42.

Thanks to all our supporters on this very cold day; Sandra, Neil and the Herbertson clan! Photos of some of you in action here.

Alan