Clydebank 5k Road Race

A melting pot of perfect racing conditions, a flat, freshly ironed tarmac road and a stacked quality field made today’s race an excellent opportunity for PB and SB seekers alike at Clydebank’s annual 5km road race.

A generous start time of 2pm and dry 14 degrees brought out a large stellar field looking to participate in this enter on the day race.

Andy Buchanan, Sandy Hayden, Russell Couper and an old harrier legend from some six or seven years ago making his comeback, Blair Matthew made the journey the Clydebank playdrome.

Blair making his first racing appearance in some years after relentless injury problems finally found some consistent enough training to make a return racing.  While myself Russell and Sandy were eager to test out our latest good form and consistent training in this short, sharp, 5km race.

The race begins with 2 laps of Clydebank industrial estate on perfect flat roads covering the first 3.5km before moving briefly onto the main road then turning a sharp left to join the canal towpath for the remaining 1500m to the finish.

I positioned myself within the masses of nervous twitching energy of the second row of what was clearly a very experienced field.  Within the first 100m after the gun I was surprised to be elbowed and stubbed down to what felt like 150^th place with barely enough space to stretch my legs in the dense fury of movement.  I was forced to head out wide on the slowly banking left turn to move ahead in the field after the pace evened in the opening half kilometre. On completing the first the lap I found some rhythm, but in a no-mans land between two large groups of runners meaning I had to pace my own race for what was left of the distance whilst picking off stragglers from ahead.  I was delighted to cross the line in personal best of 16.29, a pleasing time considering my last three weeks of training have been mostly easy running and a half marathon.

 Blair followed in 17.19.  He ran the first 800m in front of me leading me to believe his predicted time of “sub 19” was clearly nonsense. Clearly a sign of more to come.

Up next was Sandy Hayden.  Sandy ran a commendable time of 24.57.  After a comfortable PB at last week’s parkrun of 24.12 she was somewhat new to the electric pace at the start of the race, perhaps over cooking the first mile.  However with this experience now in the bank there is no doubt good chunks of time will come off her already impressive 5k times.

 Russell has a history of good running at this event, the course he holds his fastest time on.  Today proved to be another good run for him.  He finished strongly in the middle field in an improving time of 26.21.  Boding well for the coming season.