The Irvine Marymass 10k road race, held on Wednesday August 19, was my 49th race of 2009 and my first ever race in Irvine. It’s a town that I used to know well, I used to cycle there from Stewarton. I wasn’t sure if I would do this race. I wasn’t feeling great, I’d managed a 30 min nap at lunch time and again after work and reckoned that I might be ok by the time the race started. I made my way down the misty and rain kissed M77, I somehow managed to find the Irvine Sports Centre. There were cars parked everywhere and the rain was bucketing down, I spotted Chris and Ellen, abandoned, oops sorry parked, the car and quickly ran into the Race HQ. After registering, changing and what constituted as a warm up, I lined up with the other 123 runners at the start of the race.
I started behind Laura Cairns, Paula Wilson and Erica Christie and in front of Brian Darroch. The race is advertised as a flat and fast course, so I was surprised to find myself running slightly uphill on the road for the first kilometre. I was feeling good and had overtaken Paula but I was still pleasantly surprised to see that I had clocked the first kilometre in four minutes. At this point the route joined the cycle path on the edge of the Irvine Beach Park. I made my way steadily along the slightly rolling course keeping my eye on the runners in front, however Paula caught me at the start of a hill at around 3k. I followed her up the hill and managed to sit in behind her as we made away along the course. She was receiving a lot of encouragement from the poor marshals standing around in the pouring rain and I also took some support from this. The route turned around at 4.5 k and as we joined the higher up road to head back, I was surprised to see Brian Darroch not too far behind us. The road left the cycle track between 5.5 and 6.5k. Although I felt that I could overtake Paula along this section, I decided not to, instead settling to sit tightly behind her. At 8k we passed the junction for the start and Paula started to work hard, I dug deep to keep close to her. She seemed to know where she was going and we were passing a few runners, so I was happy enough with that. At about 8.7k the route turned onto the seafront and headed along the promenade. I had been told that the race finished outside the Magnum Leisure Centre and presumed that we would turn into the right at some point. Paula was starting to pull away as we overtook Irvine’s Jim White and started to catch a group of four or five other runners. I was anticipating a turn to our left towards the Magnum but it never happened and we continued to run in the mist and rain along the seafront. I could now see a crowd of people and soon realised that this was the Finish Line as Jim White shot past me and I made my way over the line.
I stopped my Garmin at 42:18:21 and was ecstatic at getting a new PB by such a large margin. This was only my fourth time below 44 mins, one was last week at Pollok Park when I clocked 43:59, the other was Run with the Wind in Strathaven in November 2008 and the first time was when I set my previous PB of 43:04 at the Jack Crawford in January 2008, some nineteen months ago.
I looked for Pauline to thank her for a great run but she wasn’t there, instead I congratulated Laura Cairns, Jim White and Brian Darroch who had managed to take more than one minute off of his PB. Loads of people had enjoyed a great run and we chatted briefly before making our way back to the Sports Centre for a warm shower and hot cup of tea. After thanking Paula and congratulating Alan, Connell, Kerry, Robert, David, Claire, Sarah, Alison and others on their great runs and PBs, I made my way back up through the heavy rain and mist of the Fenwick Moors to Glasgow where some hot food and red wine capped a successful night.
My published time was 42:19. This didn’t take any shine off of my delight at beating my PB by 45 seconds, although the lack of photographers to capture the moment may have. Instead I've had to settle for a diagram of the course provided by Chris Upson.
Results
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