Harriers XMAS Handicap - Juniors to the Fore

 

Relatively mild conditions greeted a brightly coloured field of senior and junior Harriers for the annual festive handicap. This new beginning for an event that had been held every year since the club's formation (with the exception of 2020, as with most of our events) brought together many of the regular senior Harriers and an encouragingly large (and fast) contingent of junior Harriers contesting the 5 undulating laps of the main drive through Calderglen Country Park.

The runners were set off in descending order of predicted completion time over the 4 mile course. This year the handicaps were based on recent or estimated 5k times as due to the lack of road races, this was the only distance for which there was reasonable data for most of the Harriers. In some cases, pure guesswork was applied! Between the first runner and last runner being set off, there was a gap of 11 minutes to be made up. The handicap race is decided by who completes their five laps first. As the race progressed, the gaps between runners gradually decreased and by the last lap all the runners were on the same lap and the win could have gone to any one of several of our juniors who had worked their way back towards the front. Francis Santangeli appeared first on the home straight, striding out to a comfortable win in 25:46, clearly showing his potential. A gap of 2 minutes ensued before things became a little bit hectic. Four of our junior runners finished in close succession; Anna Lindsay followed up her recent cross country races finishing with the fastest lady's time (28:54), with Kai Wheeler (27:35), Angus Wilkinson (23:19) and Orla Tracey (33:51) following in close succession. Angus backed up his recent championship cross country successes by recording the fastest time of the day. Our second fastest lady was Alison Lessells (29:30) who was also one of the most colourful competitors. Second fastest man with a heavy duty soldier's uniform to hold him back was Chris McCarron in 23:53, an excellent time given what he was wearing! 

The full results are listed at the link below (note that the individual lap times are not all accurate as the splits were being taken mainly to count completed laps and the timing tablet screen was not behaving in the cold air).

Click here for results

Whereas many Harriers often shed weight as the handicap progresses, throwing bits of costume off after every lap, Ian Campbell actually gained weight as his dog, Rum, decided that 4 laps was enough and had to be carried under arm for some of the last lap! Well done Ian. An impressive range of costumes were on display again this year, from the Santas and Elves, through to a fully ripened banana. Unfortunately, Wonder Woman's super powers deserted her during the first lap, suffering from a calf strain. I hope that recovers soon Russell. 

Well done to all the Harriers running today, to Kenny for helping out on the finish line and to Eddie for keeping me right with the names of all the new members.

Alan