NATIONAL MASTERS XC

On Saturday in Kilmarnock we had 5 Harriers competing in the Masters xc championship.
First up was Stuart Waugh competing for the first time in the 65 and overs with a distance of approx. 6k. On the early part of their first lap of 2 Stuart was tucked in behind the Male leader but after about 1k or so a small gap started to open. By the end of the lap the gent who had been down in fourth in the early stages had caught and passed Stuart putting him into third and this remained so till the end with the only change being between the first 2. A great bronze medal for Stuart with a time of 29.32.
Onto the M40-M60 event and we had Andy Henderson, Kenny Leinster. David Herbertson and Russell Couper lining up. The course was a little over 8k. I knew I would be watching the field run away and so it almost turned out. The difficult part I found was only having road shoes or spikes there was a section of tarmac for about 150metres which had to be run 4 times. I needed the spikes for the rest of the course so had to go with them but the feet got hurt on the tarmac. Got a few glimpses of the other harriers after the turn at the far point of the course and all seemed to be running a steady controlled race. Andy was first Harrier home 39.36 followed by Kenny 40.57 with David 42.02 then finally myself 52.58. Happy enough with the run and an improvement from the EK cross country 2 weeks ago this one being 0.3 mile longer but not as hilly. The four of us made an over 40 team in 22nd place and 3 of us made a M50 team in 16th place. Enjoyable day apart from the tarmac and would be great to get more out at next years event wherever that turns out to be.