Kirkintilloch 12.5k

In a year which has given us some excellent running weather Phil, Andy and myself set off for Kirkintilloch on Sunday morning in probably the best yet - clear, crisp (almost warm!), calm and sunny. With Phil as my human satnav we arrived even before race registration was set up prompting Andy to say how pleasant it was to arrive at a race without having been lost even once!

Having listened to Andy talk about his pre-race routine Phil and I decided to attempt to boost our performances by drinking some espresso from the mobile coffee van parked nearby. It turns out he drinks his an hour before the race whereas we only decided to do so eight minutes from the start! It seemed to work for me however Phil had to have a comfort break half way round and has no intention of repeating the experiment.

Robert Rogerson, the RD of Kirky Olympians, welcomed a record field to the tenth running of this race and happily claimed to have organised sunny skies for every one of those years - it certainly was shorts and vest weather.

Having stated in advance that he was planning a ‘threshold’ run Andy steadily disappeared into the distance in about 5^th or 6^th place while Phil and I settled into a more conservative pace from the off. We ran together until just after the 3k marker when I stretched out down one of the many hills on the route. Any one who has taken part in this race before will remember that there are few flat stretches, constant effort and concentration being the order of the day with no chance of settling into a rhythm.
 

 The overall race winner was none other than wee Rab himself, Robert Gilroy, in 41:08, five seconds ahead of his Cambuslang clubmate Kerry-Liam Wilson, those two having run a race within a race way ahead of everyone else. The third and fourth-placed finishers were also relatively isolated but not so oor Andy who, despite having what he thought would be a comfortable margin in hand over the sixth–place host club runner, had to abandon all hopes of a steady run and resort to a lung-bursting, eyeballs-out finishing kilometre to hang on to an excellent fifth place, in the end by just five seconds. As it turned out he only had thirteen and fifteen seconds over seventh and eigth places. Andy recorded a faster than expected 46:11 while the leading female was the unattached Shona McManus in 49:08.

I steadily passed around a dozen or so competitors over the last few kilometres to cross the line in 168^th place in 64:19 which I was very pleased to note later was only eleven seconds slower than my course best of six years ago. Phil, despite the impromptu stop, came home in 69:24 for 216^th position. The 267^th and last runner came back in 93:19.

When uploading to Garmin Connect I noticed an elevation gain of 115 metres which, over less than eight miles, equates to blooming hilly! I also realised (I know, it’s sad) that this was my 300^th race in my twenty two years of running.

PS Sorry Phil but the photographer at half-way seems to have missed you altogether, was this perhaps where you made your pit-stop?

Stop press: I have found a link to a video of Andy's finish from the Kirkie fb page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwpIRS5_T64