Medals for the (old) boys in Livingston

The last Sunday in March attracted another large field to the National Road Relays in Livingston. Not only that but the snow from earlier in the week was replaced with blazing sunshine and temperatures in the high teens. Very unusual but we would definitely take it!

Calderglen's M50 team with their medals

This weekend the Harriers fielded a full ladies' team of 4 (Kay Conneff, Joanne McEvoy, Sandy Hayden and Frances Ferguson), a full M50 team of 4 (Charlie McDougall, Alan Derrick, Eddie Reid and Davie Watt) and a partial senior men's team (Gordon McInally, Richard Lawton, Andy Henderson and Russell Couper).

The event followed the usual format with alternating short (approx 3 miles) and long (approx 5.8 miles) legs. Although racking up the miles for the forthcoming Stirling Marathon, Kay Conneff got the ladies off to a good start recording a time of 22:37 on the first leg. Joanne McEvoy is in great form right now and was given the long leg to exploit her fitness. Joanne delivered a fine run, finishing in 41:13 and pulling the team up into 30th position. Sandy Hayden is on the way back to fitness and is piling in the training (running, cycling and swimming). This run was therefore intended to be a training run for Sandy on tired legs. Sandy recorded a time of 26:10 and only slipped back to 35th. Finally, Frances Ferguson was running off the back of a very high volume of training in Portugal and could not be expected to be fresh. However, Frances ran a great leg, finishing in 42:21 and 28th position, a great result overall.

Our M50 team (not quite the same personnel) had recently finished third in the SVHC road relays in Strathclyde Park and were at least in with a shout in this National Championship. However, it is always very difficult to separate out the M50 teams from the senior and M40 teams and so nothing is ever certain until the final result is read out. Charlie McDougall (actually an M65!) led off the team and had to remind himself that he was in a separate race to all the young men who took off at great speed from the start. Charlie used his experience to keep the team in a strong position but disaster struck in a dark underpass about 1km from the finish when Charlie did not see a step up in the darkness, tripped and fell flat on his face. Despite skint knees and arms, Charlie got to his feet, shaken and possibly a little slower to complete the course in 22:07 and 7th position in the M50 competition. Alan Derrick had flown back the night before from 3 weeks hard training in Portugal and was feeling heavy legged. However, after a cautious start up the first long climb, he got into his running and ran very consistently, relishing the opportunity to pass many teams which helped drag him around the course. Alan finished in 34:52, pulling the team back up to 3rd position behind Cambuslang and Edinburgh AC. Eddie Reid had returned from Portugal a week earlier and was still heavy legged from the high mileage done there. Experience allowed Eddie to manage that fatigue though and he ran to the limit on the day, finishing in 21:06 and dropping only two places to finish in 4th behind Cambuslang, Edinburgh AC and PH Racing Club. Finally, we saved the best to last with Davie Watt. Davie moved back up through the field, overtaking both PH Racing Club and Edinburgh AC. However, at that same underpass which had earlier caught out Charlie, Davie's old Metro Aberdeen training buddy, Nick Milovsorov (first M50 at the National XC this year by a long way), went past, dropping Calderglen down to third, a position which Davie was able to hold all the way to the line. This equaled our best performances in this event (in 2008 and 2009 in the M40 class) and was a great boost for the team and the club to be back receiving a national championship medal.

Our men's senior team was incomplete (should have been 6 for a senior team) but the effort put in was anything but incomplete! Gordon McInally set the team off on leg one, finishing in an excellent 23:25. Richard Lawton was instructed to use this run as part of his marathon training and had done a long run the day before. Richard finished in 42:22, a course best for him. Andy Henderson relished the warm conditions, finishing in 22:29, excellent for an M60. Finally, Russell Couper had his training knocked back by a very heavy cold and was still heavy legged. However, Russell was again told to just take this as part of his training and just put miles in the bank. Russell finished in 56:30.

If only all events at Livingston could be in such fine weather! Well done to all the Harriers competing and Sandra Reid supporting and providing the team photo at the prize giving.
Alan

PS: is it just me or did anyone else find it farcical to see one of Bellahouston Harriers' and Scotland's greatest ever runners, Peter Fleming, who emigrated to the USA 20 or 30 years ago to pursue a professional running career and who was back in Scotland for a two week family holiday, running in the winning M50 Cambuslang Harriers team? At the very least, if I was one of Cambuslang's regular M50's who missed out on a team place and hence a guaranteed national championship gold medal, I would have been annoyed. In an insignificant way, this is the same underlying problem that Seb Coe as IAAF president is trying to sort out on the international level with, e.g. Turkey in particular having various Africans running for them, effectively a flag of convenience, to raise Turkey's athletics profile. It is the situation that resulted in Calum Hawkins being third in the European Cross Country Championships rather than first. It is a symptom of a world where it is only winning that matters. Anyway, rant over. Back to a light-hearted and positive blog!