Christmas Handicap 2016

An extremely colourful squad of Harriers brightened up a very dull Sunday morning at the weekend for the annual Calderglen Harriers Christmas Handicap. 26 Harriers and friends dressed up for the 4 mile race; a record turnout. Each runner is set off individually in reverse order of their predicted finishing time, meaning that the fastest runner starts last. If the handicapper has done the sums right, then everyone should cross the line together. However, as that would be complete chaos, a little bit of flexibility is built in. The winner of the handicap is the first to cross the line. This year we had the usual mix of elves, super-heroes, cartoon characters and just plain quirky. Some outfits were easy to run in whereas others were definitely not. If that was not enough of a handicap, it was also the Harriers' annual dance the night before.

Handicap winner Sandy Hayden

This years' first time winner was Alexandra "Sandy" Hayden who despite claiming a severe hangover from the word go, ran consistently on each of the 5 laps to pass those in front and not be caught by anyone. Sandy crossed the line in 32:01, a great time in the circumstances. A minute behind, Alison Johnstone sprinted to the line in second place, closely followed by Lorraine Buchanan in third place.

Fastest time of the day to Martin Duthie

Fastest time of the day went to a jet lagged Martin Duthie, just back from Thailand competing in a half Ironman triathlon (see report below), who galloped across the line (minus horse) in 24:22. Second fastest was pint of lager Neil Green in an excellent 24:43. Stephen Phimister made a late decision to run and dusted off his old red man costume for a controlled 26:30 effort.

Julie Beveridge, fastest lady and fastest elf

Fastest lady was Julie Beveridge in 26:50, first of the elves. Cave woman Marion O'Connor was not far behind in 28:44 despite carrying a club all the way around. Kay Conneff was a super-hero and crossed the line in 29:01 without using any of her super powers (as far as we know).

Fastest of our juniors was Chris McCarron in 28:49 and our youngest competitor was Aiden Howell who finished in 32:43.

Davie Searil, not the best choice of footwear!

Several runners vied for the title of most handicapped by their costume. Honourable mentions go to David Searil dressed as a Subuteo player, complete with hemispherical feet (now injured), Jim Holmes dressed as club mascot "The Oyster Catcher" who was blinded by his beak and collided with a low hanging branch and Alan McLelland who went with a suffocating, all enveloping skeleton outfit. However, winner of this category (and not for the first time) was Eddie Reid, who dressed as Santa's sack, which would have been fine but for the fact he went one step too far with his costume by wearing a couple of Christmas paper wrapped boxes over his head with tiny holes for vision (allegedly).

Visionless Eddie Reid

All in all another great Harriers event. All the finishing times are listed here (please ignore the individual lap times as the lap counter was being used only to count completed laps and was not being triggered precisely when competitors crossed the start/finish line).

Finally, our roving photographer Billy Buchanan captured pretty much everyone on camera in this album. Thanks to Billy for taking the photos and to Russell for identifying the runners at the end of each lap.
Alan