It was my office Xmas party on Friday so I wasn’t expecting to be in any great state for racing on Saturday. With that in mind, I gave the West of Scotland Cross Country Championships a miss, deciding instead to bag another parkrun. However, I felt surprisingly good on Saturday morning and was confident that I would improve on my last outing. Unfortunately though, the weather was not conducive to fast times, with black ice and puddles making the course even more difficult than usual. Race Director, for the day, Campbell Joss wisely advised the runners to “save our PBs for another day”.
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| Jacqui Thomson |
I had a wee chat with Jacqui Thomson during my warm up and she advised me that as well as coming back from an operation, she was also suffering from a cold. Despite her handicaps, I was surprised to find her running on my shoulder for the first third of the race. She never said anything but she did seem to have a surprised look on her face when, rather than run around two runners, I shouted “runner coming through” and they moved out of my way. We were running at 4:16 pace and on a very good day I might have been able to maintain that but running along side someone who has completed the course in 18:47 was a bit intimidating and rather than using Jacqui’s presence as a spur to a good performance, I did my usual and took my foot of the pedal a bit. That said, I thought I was still having a good enough run and was making my way slowly up through the field. I was just about to increase my pace for the final kilometre, when I noticed that the two runners that had let me pass them in the first lap were on my shoulder, there was no way that I was going to let them pass me. I focussed on a guy in white in front and managed to catch another few runners before sprinting down the final 200m to cross the line in 22:31 in 39th place.
As usual I shared congratulations with the runners around me. The two guys had actually been father and son and they both complimented me, not only on my race but also my running style. The dad, Graeme Pert, was delighted to have run a PB of 22:45, taking 8 seconds off of his previous best time and asked me if I could take a photo for them to mark the occasion. For my part, I was disappointed with my time but delighted to have finished so far up the, albeit depleted, field of 162 runners.
My time was actually the same as my chip time last Sunday, which to be fair was on an easier course. I had improved last week’s Glasgow parkrun time by 12 seconds but if I had worked a bit harder it could have been much more. However I had chalked off another day in the 31 day Marcothon and my 63rd race of 2011 not too bad given that I am kind of in ‘holiday mode’ with my London Marathon Training scheduled to begin on 18 December. Once again, huge thanks to my fellow runners, the supporters and in particular the marshals and other volunteers who seemed to be in fine fettle despite it being such a cold morning.
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