GSR Race Report

GSR 6th October
My Sunday started with a pleasant train journey to Glasgow in the company of the McKenzie and Herbertson clans, playing a game of celebrities on the younger Mr Herbertson’s phone, little did he know he was sitting opposite one, not.

After a near twenty minute delay the thousands of runners were finally sent on their way by Olympic rowing gold medallist Katherine Grainger. The warm, muggy conditions meant a steady first half for me but my day was transformed for the last 5 miles or so by a pleasant cooling rain which allowed me to push on and finish over 7 minutes faster (I said 8 on TV, sorry) than last year in 1:50:02 Three seconds faster would have been nice but…I also got to within 10 feet of the great man himself, Haile Gabresellassie. Admittedly we were running in opposite directions along Paisley Road West, only separated in the race by around three miles! I also ran past last year’s winner, Joseph Kibor, who dropped out just before the Kingston bridge. Yes, another scalp!

Other harriers times on the day were as follows;
Andrew McCaffery 1:20:07 (wow!)
Chris Wilson 1:26:25
Stephen Phimister 1:29:58
Jim Holmes 1:35:00
Ian McKenzie 1:55:57
Mary Goldsmith 1:56:13
David Wardrope 2:01:44

Both Jim and David were also running their 21st Great Scottish Runs, in David’s case (due to PF and sciatica) promising to ‘walk round if he had to’ – going by his time he didn’t walk much, if at all.

David Herbertson survived the pressure of being a pacer to bring his group home ‘bang on time’ while Graham Ramage had an ‘awful’ run in around 1:41 but I can’t be more precise as I don’t know his running alias.

Note that we also had Jim Mearns competing in the 10k to round out the Harriers participation (sorry if we missed anyone).

As most of you will know already my day was rounded off by a live(!) interview on the BBC which seemed to come over quite well and, I’m pleased to say, was a good advert for the harriers.
David Searil