West District XC - Irvine

Despite the hurricane and snow of the preceding week, conditions at Irvine were just about perfect on Saturday for the West District Cross Country Championships. The sandy soil had drained well and was firm under foot except for the usual quagmire in the field around the start/finish area and the winds were thankfully light. A route identical to that used in recent years was set but this time run in the reverse direction, with the biggest hill coming towards the end of each lap.

This was race number 10 in the Grand Prix and the last of the year so there was plenty of incentive to end 2011 strongly. Calderglen were well represented in the senior ladies' race with Julie Beveridge, Frances Maxwell, Joanne McEvoy and Karen Sturgeon all lining up for the 2 lap, 6.4km race. Julie rocketed away at the start and gradually extended her lead  over Frances throughout the race. Julie finished in an excellent 34th position out of 102 in a time of 27:49. Our next three ladies all battled closely throughout with Frances leading the chase for much of the race, followed by Joanne and Karen. In the final quarter mile, Karen called upon her reserves of strength and surged past Joanne and Frances to finish in 50th position in 28:58 with Frances (29:00) and Joanne (29:04) in 51st and 52nd positions completing the formation finish! Frances was 12th veteran in a very strong field.

The senior men's race covered 3 laps of the same course, totaling 9.6km. 212 men lined up of which at least half appeared to be veterans. On the starters whistle the field charged through the mud where one runner immediately lost his shoe, stopped to go back for it and was knocked flat on his back by the masses. All the Harriers survived the start except for Russell Couper who pulled a calf muscle before the first corner but manfully carried on for the remaining 9.5km to secure his Grand Prix points! Continuing a recent trend,  I could not go with the initial pace of the other veterans around me and watched them stretch away over the first 500m before I was able to gradually start clawing back the gap and passing people. The first lap was the fastest (just) but seemed the longest. By the second lap I had managed to catch some of my regular rivals but was struggling to pull away. However on lap 3 I managed to open a gap and pull in a few more stragglers from the packs ahead and ran strongly to the line in 35:10, 48th position and 8th veteran. Andrew McCaffrey had his strongest cross country race yet, except for the muddy bits where he felt he was struggling. Andrew finished in 85th position in 37:08. Eddie Reid was not comfortable from start to finish but still ran well to finish in 40:33, somehow letting adopted Harrier Donald Kennedy (Kilbarchan AC) to get away from him (Donald finished in 39:24). Ian Rae is a specialist on this particular course and repeated his habit of beating Jim Holmes here. Ian finished in 41:35 with Jim two places behind in 41:43. Kenny Leinster loves this sort of course and most importantly remained injury free to finish in 42:30. Graham Lindsay is benefiting from regular racing nowadays and had his best ever run on this course recording 43:16. George Stewart had his second nightmare in the space of a day, following his Friday night performance in the Fife Nightmare race series with a daylight performance which saw him drop a few places lower than expected, finishing in 43:56. David Wardrope trailed Hugh Simpson for almost the whole race but managed to muster some speed on the last lap as Hugh faded to finish in 47:04 with Hugh eventually a minute behind in 48:11. Russell kept plugging on to the end to finish in 60:59.

Well done to all and thanks to the support. A special mention to Billy Buchanan who brought his new spikes along for a gradual introduction to cross country, not even taking them out the box and instead lending some much appreciated vocal support. Thanks to Joanne for the photos, all of which are here. The race created some space for the evening's Harriers' Christmas Dinner which most of those racing were able to attend.