Report from Gerry. We had five complete teams and one incomplete team taking part in the Scottish National cross country relay championships at Cumbernauld on Saturday, 27 October. This is the biggest relay event in the Scottish calendar and so you get large numbers of teams taking part and some very high quality runners participating. In both the men’s and ladies races each runner had to run over a testing 4km course with some inclines and a bit of mud to add to the fun, well it is cross country after all! We were glad to have a fine day for running, spectating and hanging around while waiting our turn to run. For the ladies we had one team competing (Louise, Judith and Rose). They put in a very creditable performance finishing 45th team out of 60 teams. In the men’s event our teams positions were, out of 103 finishing teams: ‘A’ (Kieran, Craig, Bruce and Bob) – 20th ‘Vets’ (Russell, Mark, Greig and Liam) – 35th overall and 7th in the vets category ‘C’ (Andy, Rankin, Gerry and Peter) – 56th ‘D’ (John Gilhooly, Stewart, Ollie and John Newlands) – 80th and a incomplete team of Andrew, Tony and Chris. Well done to all and we look forward to the next cross country action which will be individual events rather than team relays.
Monthly archives: October 2012
Report from Bryan. So why did a pasty white Scotsman decide to run a marathon in a hot, humid and as it turns out windy island……answers on a postcard! That’s the very question I was asking myself a week ago on Sunday. I haven’t had much racing during 2012 and was somehow talked into signing up for the Palma de Mallorca marathon….still trying to work out how that happened. My build up appeared to go well with a good finish at the Stirling 10K and Dumfries half marathon during September. The only thing I couldn’t control when I got to Palma would be the weather conditions. This preoccupied my mind during the preceding couple of days, with me constantly checking what the predicted conditions would be- I was assured rain. The rain came on Saturday night and finished about 4am Sunday morning. Standing on the start line, it was 18 degrees, a bit of cloud and very windy….could be worse, it wasn’t as humid as it had been the previous few days. Getting nearer the start time I could feel the adrenalin begin to kick in, it may have been the 2 large coffee’s and high5 drink full of caffeine I had taken, I’m not sure but whatever it was it was starting to work. We were off at 9am and I worked my way through the group of people who clearly should not be near the front of a race and quickly got into my stride. I went through the first mile in 6.11….well done give yourself a tick, just 25 and a wee bit to go. The race started in the shadows of the Cathedral La Seu on the Autovia de Llevant and headed west to Porto Pi before turning and heading back to Palma. As I turned at the 5K and headed back to Palma, I got some shouts of encouragement from runners heading to the turn…”on yerself Bella”, it certainly put a spring in my step. As we approached the 10K point I had picked up a few running companions. A couple of Spanish fella’s sat in behind me and although there wasn’t much talk, mainly as my Spanish would have made things complicated, it was good having the company. We went through 10K in 38:26 and I was still feeling good. After the 10K mark runners turned into old Palma town. The course became more undulating, with narrow streets and some tight turns but it did bring some welcome shade from the now more present sun and a break from the coastal wind. A temperature read-out at the 10K showed it was now 20 degrees and 70% humidity. As me and my 2 Spanish companions made all the twists and turns around Palma, I was certain the pace was quickening, although my Garmin wasn’t giving accurate readings due to the narrow streets and poor reception. I decided that the pace was faster than I wanted so let my amigo’s take the lead…..this may have been […]
Report from Al Sunday morning, 21st of October, I woke early with a fair amount of intrepidation about a long looked forward to race called ‘Run of the Mill’ in the Ochils. Over the year, I’d done quite a few races in the Ochils, The Law Breaker and Dollar, and had come to really like the steep but runnable terrain. After fueling up on silly amounts of pancackes, and a few hours of pre-race faffing, I headed off north to Alva. Late morning the weather was getting better and better and the mist on the hills lifted above the tops. It was sunny, warm and still. That, with the lovely autumn colours, made the 102 runners that gathered at the bottom of Alva Glan rather pleased that they’d decided to get up for one of the few remaining hill races of the year. Having lacked some zip in my cross country efforts the day before, I wasn’t too confident about how I’d do, but my warm up went well and I decided to give it a really good crack. One of my goals was to beat my pal Gary Fraser from Ochils hill running club. He’s a verteran of over 100 hill races and an incredible decsender. At Dollar and Ben Venue this year, he’d whizzed past me in the closing stages. I was going to beat him this time. Needed to get further head of him on the ascent – that would be the plan. It was good to see Mark Johnston and Matt Williamson at the race start. The race began, and a fast leading group with Mark and Matt in it shot out ahead. The course begins with a straighforward 150m climb then a fast easy descent over 3km down towards Tillicoultry and the beginning of the Law Breaker hill race route. After tracking Gary for a while I felt the pace was a bit slow and pushed on faster, overtaking a bunch of guys on the stretch to Tillicoultry. Now the ascent. The first bit is super steep up the Law Breaker route. Some, included me, managed to keep running on this bit. This tends to be the best bit of my race and I steadily overtook more runners until I got to 8th place. Matt was about 150m ahead of me at this stage and a over the course of the next 40min remained about the same distance ahead until I lost him completely on the descent. With the bulk of the ascent done (which seemed to take forever) we had the traverse of the summits to do – Andrew Gannel hill, Ben Cleugh and Ben Ever. On one of the descents between these tops I came flying off my feet and landed with a squelch in the mud. No harm was done but I was now covered in black stuff. The descent was physically really really hard. I felt like I’d used up all my energy going uphill and spent the whole descent thinking […]
Report from Sandy Four Bellas went through to the Pentlands last weekend for this long classic – me, Gordon, David and Grant. The race is 16 miles, 1890 metres of ascent and 16 hills. I had wanted to do this race for ages, but somehow despite this singularly failed to train for it. I think it is fair to say that the week before the race me and Gordon were quite scared – we kept looking at each other and whenever one of us mentioned the word ‘skyline’ the other would say ‘let’s not talk about it!’. This was my longest race and I wasn’t sure what it would be like. Gordon was worried about pacing, due to his tendency to race off like a maniac at the start and pay for it later. The race was very busy, with 257 people starting (not everyone finished…) meaning that the start was so congested there was no chance of anyone apart from the leaders racing off – we were all stuck doing a frustratingly slow walk / shuffle for the first 10 minutes. The race itself was lovely (if anything that involves so much pain and desperation can be called lovely). It was sunny but cool, perfect running weather, until we got to Carnethy, about a third of the way into the race, when the rain started pouring down (Gordon claims he didn’t experience any rain at all during the race, he must have been either moving too fast or running in his own world…). Due to a self inflicted nutrition failure the wheels came off my bus about 3 hours in, after trudging through some incredibly life force sapping deep mud on Black Hill. I experienced what I think must be my lowest, dignity free point ever in a race, when I fell on the downhill, got cramp in my leg, and had to beg a passing runner for a sook from her camelbak while rolling around on the ground. The passing runner happened to be someone who had made the mistake of following me at Ben Venue the previous weekend (obviously thinking that as I had a Bella vest on and it was a Bella race that she would be in safe navigational hands) and as a result taken the worst line ever off the hill. Despite this, she took pity on me rather than running off laughing. I then crawled (literally) up Bell’s Hill while belatedly trying to force some energy type things down my throat. I was so tired I actually contemplated just sitting down, but thought I had already embarrassed myself enough for one race. The race got much easier from here, and I managed to keep putting one foot in front of the other, even managing a vague sprint to the finish line (nearly knocking over one of the finish line posts in the process, I must have been a bit delirious and not running in a particularly straight line). Bella results: Grant finished in […]
Results of todays relay race can be found here (click link). Big thanks to everyone who made the event possible.
This years Jimmy Irvine Achilles Heel Bella 10K race is filling up even quicker than it did last year! A big thanks to those who have already entered, we are absolutely delighted with the support so far. With three and a half weeks until race day and only 21 entries of the initial 500 entries allocated available we are happy to say we are releasing a further 100 places for the race. Please see all race details with entry details on the events page here. Preparations are in full flow and we are looking forward to a bigger and better experience for everyone taking part this year! See you all in November!
Report from Bruce. Before this race Geoffrey Mutai had announced his intentions to have a go at the world record – and with a flat course and a cold but sunny morning things were looking good. With the Siegessaule glinting in the sunshine and the motivational music pumping it was hard not to get sucked into the mood on the start line. A great start – 3.06 for the first km, and it didn’t even feel that hard. You’d better watch out Mutai! Oh no, wait, turns out that marker was way off as everyone’s GPS watch started beeping a minute later. Oh well, back to business. Plan A was to get under 2.40, plan B was sub 2:41.24 (i.e. a PB) and plan C was sub 2.45. Of course, there’d be no need for a plan D. All was going well, the crowds were out in force and although it was sunny there was plenty of shade along the route. Having km markers was great, they were just flying by, and I’d fallen in with a couple of guys who had non-committal “somewhere between 2.40 and 2.45” target times and we ran together, trying to eek out a wee bit of chat here and there. It was at about 11-12km that things started to get really tough. These legs did not feel like they were about to kick into another gear. I was still technically on track for plan A, but that was definitely slipping. By the time I got to halfway I was definitely onto plan B. I’d arranged to meet Nina just after halfway but hadn’t really counted on the pavements being about 10-deep with supporters. Oh-oh! Luckily we spotted each other, and a seamless handover of gel and a drink was executed. Buoyed by seeing a friendly face and some energy gel safely ingested it was only a matter of time before I would push on again. I hoped. Just another km, then I’ll start pushing…..OK, I’ll wait til the next one….. don’t worry about all these folk coming past, I’ll catch them in a minute….the legs won’t feel so tight and hobbly in a while…. It’s when things aren’t going well that the little things start to get to you. I wasn’t really enjoying the plastic cups of water – only filled to halfway, you spilled half of that when grabbing it from the aid station volunteer, and then had only a wee splash to try and get in your mouth, most of which just ended up being flung uncoordinatedly into your face/up your nose. I reckoned only one sixteenth of a cup was getting into my system each time. The injustice of it all! By the time I’d snapped out of that sort of ridiculous whiney thinking, I’d stopped looking at my splits altogether (I could sense it was not good news). I was definitely in plan D territory. What was plan D again? Oh dear….. OK then, I’ll get to 37km and it’s […]
Report from Hamish. The VALT is the biggest triathlon in the country with 13,000 competitors taking part across two days, over distances from super sprint to Olympic plus, and in categories from elite to age groupers to corporate relays. It all happens around the ExCel centre in London’s Docklands, and with waves of athletes moving through every 30 minutes, some starting, some finishing, others mid transition, all in amongst an EXPO selling every conceivable piece of triathlon kit known to man, it’s an exciting atmosphere. It’s all about mass participation, and with a handful of celebs and even the Branson family in attendance there’s a real buzz in the air. My race was the Olympic distance (1500 swim/40k bike/10k run) for SVM age groupers. Having entered last year and found the swim a bit of a slog, I knew my big challenge would be to nail a better swim, setting me up for the bike and hopefully a strong finish. Our age group was first away on Sunday morning, start time 6.30am. Saturday had been a perfect sunny day, but there was definitely an autumn chill in the air when the doors of the Excel opened at 5.30am and around 100 of us shuffled in hoping the Costa would be open (it wasn’t). With over 20 waves of all types racing that day, the transition area is simply massive; row upon row of bikes, towels, shoes, drinks stretching seemingly for miles. As we sorted out our kit, the main topic of conversation was whether it would actually be light by 6.30, let alone sunny. By 6.15 we were all gathered at ‘swim despatch’, but with little sign of the dawn, the organisers decided to wait for another 20 minutes…not the best thing for jangling nerves! However, we were soon filing down the steps and leaping lemming-like into the black docklands water. I’ve done a few mass swims now but it’s still a bit daunting when 100 swimmers strike out en masse. You do get a bit of physical contact for the first few minutes, and a couple of kicks to the head followed by a lungful of Thames water certainly woke me up. After a few hundred metres I found some similar paced swimmers and we drafted along together, meaning the rest of the swim flew past, over 5 minutes quicker than last year. I’m pleased to say I also avoided swimming into a rescue canoe like last year – result! Transition is known as the ‘4th discipline’ and while I’ve always been a bit sceptical about the seriousness with which some take it (practising taking off your wetsuit seems a bit extreme to me) I have to admit it is pretty impressive just how fast some people can get out of their wetsuits and onto their bikes. As I fumbled with clips and velcro I made a mental note to be less sceptical next time… The bike leg is two laps on closed roads around London, taking in some […]