Bella were, as ever, well represented at parkrun. The weekend saw the 44th running of the Glasgow parkrun event, and the first running of the Edinburgh parkrun. A great day for the Bella Posse at the Glasgow parkrun today, Sat Oct 17. Scott Kennedy who seems to have caught the parkrun bug, in between running marathons, took a further 8 seconds off of last week’s course PB to finish third in 17:44. Jane Simpson continued the fine form which made her Bella Member of the Month by going one better than her second place last week to win the women’s event in 19:30, taken a further 24 secs off of last week’s course PB! Club President Robert McEwan retained his place as best age grade %, by achieving 79.01% with a time of 19:08. Bruce Carse also earned a new PB and John Sandbach and Sandra Houldsworth both took part in the Pollok Park event with excellent first runs. Position Athlete Sex Run Time Age Grading % Age Category Personal Best 3 Scott KENNEDY M 17:44 76.41% SM35-39 New PB 5 Bruce CARSE M 18:15 70.87% SM30-34 New PB 10 Al MACLACHLAN M 18:42 78.88% VM50-54 13 Robert MCEWAN M 19:08 79.01% VM50-54 16 Jane SIMPSON F 19:30 75.90% SW30-34 New PB 45 John SANDBACH M 21:45 64.67% VM40-44 1st run 53 Linda KENNEDY F 22:01 69.19% VW35-39 66 Murdoch RODGERS M 22:49 69.69% VM55-59 80 Sandra HOULDSWORTH F 23:58 61.89% SW30-34 1st run Last week’s winner Carnegie Harrier Andrew WRIGHT was the first athlete across the finish line today. He completed the course in 15:49 and posted an age grade score of 83.35%. A total of 193 runners completed the course. Over in Edinburgh: Some 204 runners completed the inaugural Edinburgh parkrun in a Baltic, sunny and surprisingly wind free Cramond foreshore…………. and of course Bellahouston Road Runners were represented at the historical event. Strong performances from Richard Leyton and myself earned us both all time PBs. Richard took 16 seconds off of his best 5k time to finish in 48th position in 20:43, an age grade % of 64:04%. I proudly displayed my Bella vest as I finished four places ahead, in 44th place with a time of 20:19 (wava 73.75 %) some 19 seconds better than my previous best 5k time. Running legend Neil Renault (Edinburgh AC) led from the start and was first over the line in a time of 14:59, an age grade of 86.1% and in a day when loads of cyclists and triathletes took part, it was fitting that the first woman home was Rachel Ramsay of Edinburgh Road Club who completed the course in 20:48, 71.31%. Thanks to Ian Goudie for the race reports, and a huge thanks to the teams of volunteers that made both the Glasgow and Edinburgh parkrun events such a success on Saturday.
Racing
A little rain, a bit of mud and autumn leaves blowing around the park made for excellent cross country conditions today at Pollok Park for the Renfrewshire Cross Country Relays hosted by Bellahouston Harriers. Both captains had a stress free day with all runners reporting for duty as requested. In an exciting climax to the Ladies race our girls were in with a shout of a medal right to the very end, finishing in 4th place, only 6 seconds behind the 3rd place team. The boys on the other hand weren’t so close, finishing in 5th place, but less than a minute from the medal positions in the end. The course was a little shorter than advertised but that just meant the fun was over a wee bit quicker. Thanks to the numerous supporters and all the runners. I hope you all had a good day. Roll on the nationals next week…
Great report on the recent Melbourne marathon, from Alan Scott, proving that Bellahouston Road Runners is a club with a decent range! Perfect conditions for the marathon at 7am this morning. We started next to the Rod Laver Tennis Arena (home to the Australian Open) and headed up and into the city centre before heading south along St Kilda Road. We then turned into Albert Park to complete a circuit of the Melbourne Grand Prix Course. I had set off with the 3hr 30min pace runners but from here found myself gaining on the 3hr 20min bus as we headed north along the bayside. Sally was perfectly placed to give me my second gel and we headed out to the furthest point of the course. I then started to pull away from the 3hr 20min mob, a mistake as I would later learn. Round about the 30km mark we merged with the slower participants in the half marathon. We then spent the next 10/15 mins weaving through them. The two groups briefly seperated as the marathoners headed up the only ‘hill’ on the course alongside the Tan (think Melbourne’s equivalent of Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park, London’s Hyde Park, New York’s Central Park or Tokyo’s Imperial Palace). At this point I was struggling and was swiftly passed by the 3hr 20m guys. But from here it was less than 4km to the finish at the MCG where we had to enter the stadium and complete a lap on the hallowed turf. According to my watch I managed to duck just under 3hr 21mins, much quicker than I had ever imagined and almost 35mins knocked off my previous PB. With such perfect weather conditions I would definitely recommend this marathon to anyone. Alan
Photos from the 2009 Ben Venue Hill Race are starting to appear. Check back for further pictures, or post a comment with links! Pictures in the forest of all runners from Alasdair McLeod: http://www.flickr.com/photos/43183046@N05/sets/72157622514811606/ Above the forest by Ian Nimmo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishhillrunners/sets/72157622387565595/ And from the finish by Chris Upson: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisupson/sets/72157622392072319/ The weather looks lovely!
Results for the Bellahouston Road Runners first ever hill race, the Ben Venue Challenge, are now available. Click here for the results (PDF). Please report any result corrections to Andy Birnie via benvenue@bellahoustonroadrunners.co.uk. Feel free to send any comments or suggestions via e-mail, or in the comment section below. Drop us a note too if you have any pictures from the event. The gusting 80mph wind forced a course change, but nothing could dampen the friendly atmosphere or the competitive racing for Bellahouston Road Runners’ inaugural Ben Venue race. The race had a bit of everything – fast forest paths, muddy bogs, open hillside & a quick taste of the gales at the cairn but more importantly there were lots of smiling faces and plenty of homebaking at the finish! Matt Williamson (Bellahouston Road Runners) was eventual winner of the 6 mile race (1800 feet of ascent) in a time of 51 mins 17secs, having led for most of the way. He held off newcomer Peter Devenport (Unattached) and Matthew Sullivan (Shettleston Harriers) during the fast descent through Gleann Riabhach. In the girl’s race, Fiona Maxwell (Shettleston Harriers) had a slightly greater winning margin, winning in 59 mins 22 secs from Ellie Homewood (Westerlands) and Lyndsey Munro (Bellahouston Road Runners). The boys from the east coast cleared up the vet prizes with Carnethy boys taking the vet40 prizes in order of Adrian Davis, Bruce Smith & Steve Fallon. Gordon Pryde (Lomond) collected the V50 prize while Keith Burns (Carnethy) was 1st in the competitive group of V60s. The ladies vet prizes were better spread around Scotland, with Jo Schreiber (Lochaber), Joanne Anderson (Carnethy) & Caroline Strain (Wee County Runners) collecting the V40 prizes and Helen MacPherson (Westerlands) taking the V50 prize. Both team prizes went to the home club with counting runners Matt Williamson, Mark Johnston & Marcos Sans Gomez for the guys and Lyndsey Munro, Pauline Wright & Katie Padgham for the girls. Many thanks to the 83 runners who ignored the weather forecast and turned up today, and helped raise over £400 for the Lomond Mountain Rescue Team. This was Bella’s first hill race, so we’d love to hear your suggestions for how to improve things for next year. And there will be a next year, since we want to run the full advertised course, because we are so confident you will just love it! Please email any comments to benvenue@bellahoustonroadrunners.co.uk
Congratulations to club members Iona Robertson and Kenny Richmond, who have been selected to represent Scotland at the World Long Distance Mountain Running Championships at the Kaisermarathon in October. Click here for more details on the Scotland team. Both had great runs at the Ochils 2000 race at the weekend to earn their places in the team. Good luck to them both, from all members of the club, plus also good luck to Iona in the Transalp Race starting this weekend. Not bad for a road running club!
Results for today’s Bella 5k are now available. Click here to download the results (PDF). Note these were updated on 21/Aug/09 to correct some omissions, and are now the final results. Pictures are also available here, courtesy of Kenneth Phillips. Add any other photos to the Bella RR flickr pool (link). Robert Gilroy, of Ronhill Cambuslang, won the men’s race with a time of 15.31. Kirsty Husband, of Garscube Harriers, won the ladies race with a time of 18.14. 2nd and 3rd in the Men’s race went to Michael Deanson (Glasgow Uni), in 16.04, and Daniel Bradford (Glasgow Uni) in 16.11. 2nd and 3rd in the Ladies race went to Donna Finlayson (Victoria Park) in 18.51 and Michelle Sandison (Springburn) Harriers. The first male and female team was Bellahouston Road Runners. First MV40 was Charlie Thompson (Ronhill Cambuslang) in 16.05, First MV50 was Paul Thompson (Helensburgh AC) in 17.11, and first MV60 was Tony Hall (Garscube Harriers) in 21.45. First FV35 was Emma Birnie (Bellahouston Road Runners) in 19.17, First FV45 was Jacqueline Cowan (Giffnock North AC) in 21.21, first FV55 was Sandra Wilkinson (Helensborough AC) in 30.28, and first FV65 was Sallie Lloyd Jones (Jog Scotland) in 36.06. Thanks to all sponsors, volunteers, organisers and participants for making the event a great success. If you enjoyed the event, why not come along one evening and try out a training session with the club? We meet twice a week (Monday and Wednesday) at the Ski Centre in Bellahouston Park, ready to run at 6.30. We’re always friendly, and like to see new faces. Your first two sessions are free. See the rest of the website for more details.
Saturday 1st August saw the 23rd running of the Ardbeg Isle of Islay Half Marathon. Most of the purple posse started their journey from Chez Glendinning (Danielle, Greig, Nick and I) on the Friday afternoon in the Bella Bus (aka Glendinning Jeep) with an advance party already scoping the island (Alasdair McLeod & family). On the boat over to the island stomachs were churning, there was more chop in the sea than a Kung Fu movie. Fine dining Cal Mac style let us down with a severe lack of Mac Cheese which we were all looking forward to as our pre race meal. Once safely on dry land the Bella battalion made their way to base camp at the camp site. To my horror as a first time camper gale force winds were battering the island, and attempts at pitching tents was more like flying kites. The wind was so strong it cut through Team Glendinnings tent like a hot knife through butter. This gave us an issue with the sleeping arrangements but before we could start the discussion of who was sleeping where, Glendinnings were headlights in the distance, off to find a B&B somewhere on the island, securing the very last one! Not planned, honestly! Captain Nick and I decided we would tough it out and settle in for the night. The only mildly scary event of the night was me jumping out my skin when a hedgehog decided to try out my tent and the only casualty was Nicks flapjacks which the local seagulls lapped up after Nick thought it a good idea to leave outside his tent. Onto the race and first pit stop was to pick up 5th Bella Brendan from the boat. He had left Glasgow at 4:00am (!) to make his way here. With 4 members on the team this could have been a little tricky. Nick, Greig and Alasdair were assured their place but that last place was up for discussion until I stepped up to fill in the team sheet, decision made. The race started in Bowmore on a cool but windy day. The first 7 miles were into a strong headwind and six of those were uphill supplying negative splits all round. We had a job to do, being defending champions of the team prize. Team Bella faired well with Alasdair finishing 2nd, Nick 3rd, Greig 5th, myself 8th, with Brendan the only one securing a PB, which was quite a performance given the conditions. The team prize was ours for the second year. The prize giving was one to remember and I wish I could. There was plentiful supply of whisky, sandwiches and lots of crumpet! The organiser was encouraging us to drink as much as we could. Prizes were extensive, with a prize given for 1st couple, and a prize given for the guy who decided to propose to his girl half way round. Before we headed back we stopped off in Ardbeg distillery to sample yet more […]
I’m happy to report that I made my long awaited return to competititive representation to the purple machine at the Round Arran Relay at the weekend. This had coincided with me concentrating on coaching and coming back from a semi-serious knee injury but the team needed me at the weekend so rather than go and have a round of Golf on Arran I made myself available to run. An early start to get the ferry and away we went. what with the number of call offs we still didn’t know the exact line up for the teams and this was sorted out by S.M.M. (that is Sergeant Major Milligan) on the ferry over. He had a lot of call off’s over the week and I must say he did a good job of ensuring that we had a full complement for the three teams we had out, including a stand-in on the ferry as a last resort should someone else not make it. I was dumped, without too much complaint I may add, from the Alfa males team to fill a place in the second girls team which then became a mixed team. I was given the short easy leg South 1, aye right! Setting of up a short sharp hill we settled into a 400 m flat section before what seemed like 6 miles of climbing and about 1 mile of flat or slight downhill. It was hot and hard but I did my best for the purple vest thinking that although I wasn’t fast I was well pleased that I ran and worked hard for the full distance. I can honestly say that it was good to be back racing again, well I could say that 5 minutes after I had finished anyhow. It was good to cheer other Bella’s home and then meet up with the other 17 runners and a couple of spectators at the end for prize giving. Brilliant to see Claire get a stage winning award and to see the ladies team defend their title from last year. Excitement was building before the placing came out as we thought that the girls had won but weren’t 100% sure. S.M.M. was delighted to see that the Boys team finished ahead of the girls team by a few minutes as he wouldn’t have been able to contemplate not doing so. He even made a point of saying to me that Claire Blue pulling out at the last moment had really helped him out. I asked why and he said well if she hadn’t then you would have been running for the guys, not the mixed team, and Peter who stood in at the last moment was a lot faster than me. Can’t argue with that and maybe just sometimes you say something your thinking before you have chance to think about it first? On the other hand we are talking about S.M.M. Yep great to be back running for Bella, even S.M.M. hasn’t put me off. […]
Entries for the Achilles Heel Bella 5k are now open. This year the event takes place on Sunday, August 16th. Race starts at 11am, with declaration and changing (from 9.30am) at Palace of Arts, Bellahouston Park, Glasgow. Pre-entry is £5 for SAL members, and £7 for non-SAL members. There’s an additional £2 for entry on race day. Minimum age of 16 on race day. Visit https://bellahoustonroadrunners.co.uk/bella5k for more detail and to download the application form.
Chief Bella supporter (and surely member-in-waiting) dd_bdlm sends this report from yesterday’s Skye Half Marathon: The Skye Half Marathon turned out to be a purple dominated affair. Around 300 competitors ran in sunny but windy conditons. The race was led from the off by Graham Bee (Fife AC) who won in an impressive 1.15.48 Second was Gordon Lennox (unatt) and then the intrepid purple trio of Scott Kennedy (3rd), Andy Birnie (4th) and Greig Glendinning (5th) easily brought home the team prize. Second Claim Bella Andy Joyce (today running for Stornoway) was 6th. Christopher McKiddie also ran for Bella but unsure of his time. The ladies race was won comfortably by club president Emma Birnie managing to make it home just under 1.30. The prize giving had the nature of a take-over about it with the boys winning their place prizes & team prize and Andy also winning MV40 prize. Then Emma also won the Female Vet prize as well as the overall first female. With a very generous if unusual prize list next year we will need to consider a Bella Van to bring it all home! Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=8 … 6e23d6cc15
Emma has sent this excellent race report from the The Inter-Counties Fell, on Saturday 23rd May at Hutton Roof Crags near Kendal: Bella was represented by Kenny Richmond, Iona Robertson and Emma Birnie all running for the Scotland West team. The course was a tough 7 mile slog up to Hutton Roof crags then a long undulating cross country course to the near vertical acsent up Farlton Knot and back for a fast grassy descent back to Hutton Roof village. The West teams led the way in the Scottish stakes with the West girls team (Fiona Maxwell (Shettleston), Iona and Emma) bringing home bronze medals for third place and the mens west team (Matthew Gillespie & Tom Owens (both Shettleston) & Kenny Richmond the 3 counters) securing 4th place overall. Other Scottish team results are as follows: Women – Scotland East 4th (just beating Greater Manchester on first-team-home), and Scotland Central in 8th. Among the men’s teams, the honours were in the same order with Scotland West 4th, Scotland East 6th and Scotland Central 9th. The Scotland North teams were incomplete. A great day out with fabulous cakes on offer at the village fete afterwards! Full results are here: http://www.race-results.co.uk/results/2009/hutton.htm
Just a bit of blowing the club trumpet here…don’t know about anyone else, but we’ve been smiling over the last few days at the variety of races that Bella runners (and riders) have been turning up at. In the last week or so we’ve had: Greig pot-hunting on the roads and farm tracks of the Borders Bella sweeping all before them at Goatfell Joe running his 2nd superb ultra in a month a record Bella turnout at the Glasgow parkrun Ewan conquering the hills of Windermere Brian O’D flying the flag at Loch Leven Richard hashing with Mendip Hills Hash House Harriers (MH4) Mole, Bruce G and Jackie (and others?) braving the hairpins and carpet tacks on epic cycle events a couple of Bellas winning a bizarrely handicapped ’10k’ race on Skye (albeit running in the colours of their 2nd claim club!) In the coming week we’ve got (among others): a Bella contingent heading to the Inter Counties fell race in Cumbria more (even more remote) pot-hunting from Greig on the Isle of Lewis the Polaroid 10k series kicking off in Helensburgh another parkrun So we’ve got 5ks, 10ks, HMs, Marathons, Ultras, Hill Races and cycle races. Throw in the ongoing Duathlon training which folk are doing in preparation for the Highland Cross and the Corrieyairack Challenge, and I think you can say we’re diversifying more than most clubs! Doesn’t make writing training schedules any easier though! It’s all great to see and illustrates that we’re so much more than just a road running club. There’s something for everyone at Bella!
Hot off the press, Ian Goudie has sent through this race report from Wednesday’s Troon 10k: “Wet wet wet! and breezy blowy windy!” is how one of the over eight hundred runners at the 24th Troon 10k described Wednesday’s race. The torrential rain, sleet, hailstones and gale force winds made it a challenging event but the marvelous support provided by Scott, Craig, the stewards and the hardy Ayrshire locals, kept runners going to the very end. The wild weather didn’t stop Bellahouston RRs taking 35 runners for a jaunt along Troon’s South Beach esplanade. Bella’s Star of the night was Emma Birnie, who finished first in the Women’s Vet Race and third in the overall Women’s Race in a great time of 39:54. However on a night when everyone had to battle against the elements, every one of the Bella 35 were winners! Full result and photos are available on the Troon Tortoise web site: http://www.troontortoises.org.uk Ian’s personal race report is available here
A great turnout at yesterdays Jack Crawford 10k. A total of 29 Bella’s taking part, and some good performances in less than ideal conditions. A stiff and chilly wind, plenty of mud and puddles, and the infamous canal path. With a much bigger field this year (347 participants, compared to 262 last year) meant passing on this narrow course was more important than ever, and no doubt frustrated a few ambitions for pushing PB’s or gaining positions. Certainly a great set of results at the front of the pack from Andy, Greig, Alasdair, Liam and Bryan, but no details as yet on whether a team prize was taken. Norman, Ian and Tom certainly continue to battle it out in the vets championship, with a complete mirror of positions from their Nigel Barge results. Tom took the well deserved honours this week, leading the group throughout. A surge from Norman in the last stretch of the course just wasn’t quite enough. Special mention also to Lynne Andrew. Great to see her back running again after her operation last year, and I’m sure I speak for everybody in saying we look forward to seeing you back at the club again soon! See also: Full results at Springburn Harriers website here. Danielle’s pics.