My 50th Glasgow parkrun



Pic by Alasdair Mackay

It was back to racing in the cooler Scottish climate on Saturday and despite a poor night’s sleep I was looking forward to my parkrun. However due to too much gabbing, I ended up with a minimal warm up and joined the assembled throng just before the start. I say just before but I was much earlier than the ever late Chris McKiddie who joined us just as we set off. We set off and headed down the hill and turned left, where to my surprise dozens of runners overtook me. I was sure I was doing fine, so I tried to ignore them as much as possible. As we turned left into the woods the path was quite congested, a sharp right turn took us to our first hill and as I raced up it I managed to overtake a few runners, including regular Martin Myant. Up and over the glade and I was making my way through the field. I was surprised to overtake Campbell Joss for the first time in my running history, however as we approached the sharp left turn, I found myself boxed in by other runners and he overtook me. I caught up with a guy a dark blue vest and although I passed him, he returned the favour. There was another runner, in yellow, ahead of us and I used him as my target. It wasn’t long until I overtook Campbell again and I could here him saying something, although I’m not sure if it was words of encouragement to me or to him self. I passed ‘blue vest’ on the hills but he caught me again soon after. I could see David Mooney and youngster Roisin McShea in the distance and felt that I was closing the gap on them. As I made my way over the glade for the second time I overtook ‘yellow vest’ and then Roisin. Just before the left turn I was found myself behind ‘blue vest’ and A. N. Other who were running shoulder to shoulder, a quick cough and the parted, allowing me to run through them. At the left turn, I heard Steward Jim Carson shouting on his Bellahouston Harrier club mate Erica Christie and realised that she must be on my tails. I sprinted past a couple of runners but it was to little avail as she soon went flying past me. I tried but I could not hold on to her, my head went down momentarily but I soon picked up the pace and headed up the last hill. I had a decent finish, counting every second as a prisoner but I was still overtaken in the final strait. Oh no, not ‘blue vest’ again, I thought to myself and was relieved to see the diminutive figure of Roisin sprinting to the finish.
In my 50th Glasgow parkrun I had finished in 48th place out of 258, with a time of 20:57, the first time I had dipped under the 21minute barrier at the Glasgow parkrun and five seconds off of my course PB. Erica was very happy with running a seasonal best of 20:52 to place third female. Kilmarnock’s John Parker also earned a PB by finishing in 20:07, whilst new Kilmarnock Harrier Ian Logan completed the course in 26:42.

Perhaps the performance of the day was Jenny Healy who took another 37 seconds off of last week’s PB of 25:02 to record a time of 24:25 and place first in her category.

It was also good to see Norman Boyle and Louie Plenderleith making their long overdue parkrun debuts.

Daniel Bradford, who won the Strathclyde parkrun last week, won the Glasgow event this week, finishing with a new course PB of 16:52. Ann MacPhail also earned a new PB and was first woman over the line in a time of 18:50.

Results

Photos