14 Bella’s made the trip down to Irvine for the Irvine Running Club‘s 5 mile road race, which was the penultimate short distance race of this year’s Club Championship. Gathering clouds and a weather forecast to match that didn’t promise great weather, but an epic downpour 45 minutes before the event started seemed to clear the air perfectly, leaving good running conditions – the odd sea breeze excepted – for the event. An out and back from the centre of town, along cycle path on the way out, and a closed for the event Marine drive on the way back made for a great course (a few deceptive climbs over rivers and roads excepted), and excellently marshalled. Full results available on the Irvine Running club website, club member performances were: A total of 165 runners took part, and First male runner home was Neil Renault (Edinburgh AC) in 24:58 and first female Melissa Wylie (Dumbarton AC) in 31:05. A couple of prizes for the club: Claire Wharton was 3rd female home, and Mary senior 1st F40. A special mention too to Lyndsay Kennedy too for whom this was her last race with the club before moving south to Poole. Well done to everybody! A reminder that the Strathclyde parkrun on 8th August is the final short race in the club championship.
Monthly archives: July 2015
To distract myself from missing out on marathon running this year, and enticed by the thought of doing less weekly mileage, I reckoned I’d have a go at the exact opposite: track racing. Unfortunately it turns out it’s every bit as tough as road running, just more intensely tough for a shorter period of time. And the first session I tried of 10x200m (with 60s recoveries) looked like an absolute doddle on paper, but trying to do the reps in 30s soon took its toll – stinging lungs and a tweaked left hamstring. This was going to tougher than I thought. An early ‘tester’ race in the 800m was another eye-opener. After a slightly keen 64s first lap I well and truly paid the price on the second lap, with lungs that felt like I was breathing fire and spritely legs suddenly turning to lead. One of the toughest training sessions has to be 4 x (200/400/200) with 200 at 800m pace (i.e. flat out) straight into 400 at mile pace, then straight into a final 200 at 800m pace. Try it sometime. After the first one-and-a-half of these you’ll be ready for an early bath. Seriously, I would rather do 10 Sherbrooke loops than that session again! Despite the training being brutal, the taper for this 1500m race had gone well and the legs were feeling good. And it was to be a rare chance to run on THE track used from the Commonwealth Games (which had been taken up and moved to Grangemouth) it was all looking good. At registration I was told that I had to be at the ‘call room’ at least 20 mins before my event, which was all starting to sound a little bit serious! But that aside there was a friendly atmosphere and a few familiar faces from the road racing world. After 2-mile warm up jog, plus some strides and drills (I hope coach Paterson is reading this…) and we were ready to head out to the track for some nervous chit-chat at the start line, and everyone asking everyone else what age category they were in and trying to work out who was racing who. And before we knew it…. BANG! The first 300m were fine, I got there in 51s. The next lap was OK too, although a seriously dry mouth was making it hard to breathe, but was there in 2.04, so still on course…until… Uh-oh, the dreaded 3rd lap, and this is where things are starting to tighten up a bit. With the leader opening a decent gap ahead of me, there was nowhere to hide on the back straight into the headwind (which to be fair wasn’t that strong) and I was starting to struggle. I made the classic mistake and eased off slightly, thinking “I’ll just save my energy and run the last lap extra fast”. No. No you won’t. Come the bell for the last lap all those thoughts of a Mo Farah-esque 59s blast […]
11 Bellas took the trip down the coast to Girvan for this Club Championship Half Marathon today. The race was well organised and marshalled so a big thank you to Girvan Athletic Club for putting this on. It was a productive afternoon with Bruce Carmichael and Debs Gray 1st Male and 1st Female respectively and the ladies team prize went to Debs, Hayley McCrorie and Maree Shepherd. Congratulations and well done team! Well done to everyone who took part and congratulations to those who PB’d on a challenging course. Results below:
It was a 6am kick-off on Sunday morning as Robbie Hayman and I made 2 and half hour journey north to Braemar for the start of Lairig Ghru race.As I left the house it was Glasgow liquid sunshine! The rain was bouncing off my car. The weather for the race was to be cloudy with sunny spells, but this was hard to believe as the rain didn’t stop for the full journey. We reached Braemar just before 9am and headed along to the Village Hall to register for the race and I spotted the first bit of blue sky, this was looking good. Once registered Robbie and I headed back to the car to collect our running gear where we bumped into David Stakes who was also doing the race. All 3 of us headed back up to the start line for the briefing before the race started. The start line was between to lamp posts in the middle of the main street through Braemar. I don’t remember much of the briefing as the 3 of us were all wishing each other good luck for the race. After the briefing finished 30secs later the race started as there was a car waiting to drive up the street. So we were off! Robbie and I had planned to go at a nice steady pace as we know there was a fair distance ahead of us. I checked my Garmin at the first mile at it was showing 7.30 pace so I said to Robbie that this pace might be a bit fresh so early on and he agreed. Mile 2 then dropped to a 7.10 quickly followed by mile 3 hitting a 6.50. I think someone forgot to tell Robbie that we weren’t doing the London Marathon. 😯 We then hit our first hill climb on the trails and I looked at my Garmin and it was showing 7.10 pace, it was then I though this going to be an interesting run. As we made our way along the trails for a few miles Robbie mentioned if you looked up often enough the scenery looked brilliant and I couldn’t agree more. The views were stunning. A few rivers had to be crossed along the way before we hit the Boulder Field! The path at this point started to get a wee bit more twisty then we came up to the start of the Boulder Field. Robbie was leading the way and he looked a lot more comfortable about running over the top them than I did. At one point I looked to my right and seen another runner pass by me and he looked as if he was floating over the top of the boulders, and I also thought he was doing this wearing a pair of Flip Flops. My feet and toes on the other hand were killing me as I think I was playing boulder football. Looking ahead there was Big Robbie just striding over the top of them […]