My 54th race of the year should have been the Loch Ness Marathon. I had trained 18 weeks for it and was in great shape, apart from a tender left heel which had been playing on my mind. The weather forecast for the days running up to the marathon were not good for towing a caravan, I wasn't looking forward to the two and a half hour delay from getting the race bus to the start of the race and when I developed an eye infection I decided to give it a miss. On the day the start was delayed by a further 50 minutes and the hills seemed to have taken their toll on many of my running buddies who had ran the event.
Instead I decided to run in my 24th Glasgow parkrun. I stayed in on Friday and had a few drinks of the vino rouge and initially would have been happy to run around the course at an easy pace. However when I met my running buddies at Pollok Park and made my escuses to them about not doing Loch Ness the guilt kicked in and I decided that I should try for a decent time. For the first time I started near the front of the 183 runners and as I accelerated down the road after the start of the race, I was surprised that the faster runners behind me hadn't overtaken me. "I must be running too fast" I thought to myself and slowed a little, allowing them to pass me, as we made our way out of the strong winds and into the sheltered woodlands. As I ran down the glade I overtook a tall young woman with an orange top and dark blue shorts on. However as the road was slippery and there were a few branches and pot holes and a lot of leaves I decided to keep near the middle of the road. She then reappeared in the inside lane and we ran together for a bit before I overtook her on the bend and she overtook me once more at the next hill. There was a guy in front of us also dressed in an orange top and dark blue shorts and although I thought that they might have been partners she ran right passed him and into the distance.
I was happy with my pace and decided to let her go.
I was doing well and had targetted another couple of runners in front of me. I managed to overtake the guy easily but the woman was more competitive and put up a strong challenge. However when a couple of park walkers and their four dogs all but cut off our path, I managed to jump over the dogs and raced away. The sound of her footsteps behind me faded as I increased the gap between us. I could see the lass with the orange top on a good bit in front of me, with quite anumber of runners in between. I decided that the best statrategy was to race against her and ignore the runners between us. Although I had no chance of catching her my plan worked as I reeled in a few more runners, especially in the last hill. I lapped a runner as I approached the final brae but there was no-one that I could see ahead of me to that I could catch before the finish line. Instead I settled for a good controlled run over the line, which left me feeling strong. My time was 21:30 which I knew was decent for me in this course. I chatted with the gal with the orange top, Marjon from West Netherlands, and I complimented her particularly for her second lap. This was her fourth running of the event, she finished fourth woman and her time of 21:01equaled her PB.
We headed off for our usual post race banter and roll in bacon at the Burrell Cafe.
It was only later that I discovered that I had taken 18 seconds off of my parkrun PB. No substitute for missing out on a marathon but heh it was much more enjoyable.
There were a number of great performance, particularly from Liam Conway, Iona Robertson and Marina McCallum.
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