Fifties Flying in the Frost

The Harriers were well represented at the Scottish Veteran Harriers Club Road Relay Championship on a cold but windless Sunday morning in Strathclyde Park. Twenty Harriers formed two complete ladies teams, two M50+ teams, one M35+ team and one half team of two M50+ runners. The age profile of the male section of the club is certainly heading upwards!

It is a rare occasion for us to field two complete ladies teams and it was particularly pleasing to see four of our Tuesday night training members forming two thirds of our contingent. Our ladies A team was led off by the very much in form Julie Beveridge who flew around the course in 8th fastest time of the day to record a time of 22:58 for the 5.9km lap of Strathclyde Loch. This placed the ladies in 4th. Frances Ferguson is gradually getting back to form and ran a steady 27:09 on leg 2, finishing in 9th position. It was then up to Sharon Gregg in her first relay for the club to pull the club back up a place, finishing in 26:49. Our second ladies team was comprised entirely of relative newcomers to competitive running, all from our Tuesday night section. This would also be the first road relay for most. Lorraine Buchanan was on leg 1, finishing in 32:34, handing over to Julie Thomson. Julie ran a fine 31:02 and left it all for Alison Johnston to do on the last leg. Alison finished in 33:32. Well done to all the ladies. Relays often end up being individual time trials with the field usually very spaced out  after the first leg making pace judgement very difficult.

Davy Watt towards the front

On paper, we had our strongest possible M50 team out for the first time in many years. There is usually one or all of us ill or injured at this time of year. Strongest of all was Davy Watt on leg 1, who pretty much dead heated for first place in the M50 race and was 8th overall amongst all the much younger runners to finish in a fantastic 20:49. Eddie Reid was making a welcome return to first team duty after several years of injury. However, despite the appropriate venue, his return was not plain sailing as he succumbed to a cold earlier in the week and was definitely not firing on all cylinders. Nonetheless, Eddie ran a respectable 24:09, placing us about 5th or 6th in the M50 race. Martin Duthie would find this a little cold, his last race having been in tropical heat in Thailand before Christmas. However, Martin always responds to a challenge and stormed around in 22:15 to put us 5th. Martin was happy with his form given the heavy miles he had been putting in for the Half Ironman in Thailand and now in training for the London Marathon. I took over on the 4th leg with the possibility of making up two places at best, first and second being well away. I caught the first within about 1km to move up to 4th and passed the next one a few hundred metres later at the top of the loch to move up to third. Thereafter it was a pretty lonely run with nobody in sight ahead and nobody passing me. I had one verbal altercation with some members of the public who were completely blocking the path (a record, there are usually more confrontations with dugs, prams, weans and extendable leads per lap) but was feeling pretty heavy legged from start to finish so the second half was a bit of a struggle.

I got a slight boost on crossing the line when another runner asked me what time I had run. I could not read the small print on my watch so showed it to him to read and he said 21:14 which was way faster than it felt. I was happy with that. However, when I downloaded the watch to Garmin Connect at home, I saw that the time was in fact 21:41; right numbers, wrong order, which was pretty disappointing (I ran only 4 seconds slower last year having run the Devils Burden Hill Relay the day before) but not surprising. Lesson - don't trust any veteran athlete to have any better eye sight than your own! They usually don't. However, we did finish 3rd M50 team and picked up the prize for that. Its a few years since we have managed that.

Part of the 3rd place M50 team - Alan Derrick, Eddie Reid, Martin Duthie

Our second M50 team was pretty much an M60 team with all but Allan McLellan in that age category (and Allan will soon be). So this was a trial run for our future M60 team - a very talented team. Andy Henderson set off on leg 1 and finished in a fine 25:01. One of Calderglen's finest runners from the past, Allan McLellan was making his first serious race appearance after being out of running for the best part of 20 years. Naturally this was a nerve wracking occasion for Allan but the old racing head kicked in and despite a very spread out field, Allan ran a well paced 24:08. Stuart Waugh tackled leg 3 completing in a pretty much individual time trial time of 26:20. Finally, Charlie McDougall returned from a series of recent injuries and infections only to be thwarted by a lack of marshalls at the far side of the course, going off course for a while but still recording a fine 24:12.

Our M35+ team was led off by another returning from injuries and missed training with Martin Howell recording a fine 23:45. This is comparable to his time last year when he was less troubled by injuries so very encouraging. Richard Lawton was frozen on leg 2 and only just warmed up when he crossed the line in 26:44. Gordon McInally was one of our intrepid Devils Burden Hill relay participants on Saturday and could not have been fresh on leg 3. Unfortunately this was confirmed when his hamstring pinged a few hundred yards into the race. Gordon did it for the team and hobbled round in a still fine 26:32 to hand over to John Boyd making his relay debut. John then went on to record a fantastic 25:12. He is obviously made for this sort of event!

Russell Couper led off our 4th (half) team and takes every opportunity to get the miles in as he builds towards the London Marathon. The miles are making a difference and Russell, despite not feeling great, ran his best time here for years, finishing in 30:42, Billy Buchanan had a serious chest infection at the tail end of last year and was under strict instructions from family and friends to treat this as an easy training run and not to push. This Billy gladly agreed to do and cruised round in a comfortable 28:50.

A big thanks to all the Harriers and especially our supporters who braved freezing conditions to cheer us on (Kevan, Neil, Mandy, Jim, Mark and daughter to name a few). It is much appreciated.
Alan