Better Performance at Bella?

The heavy rain during last week made for extremely heavy conditions at Bellahouston Park on Saturday afternoon for the Renfrewshire Cross Country Championships.  The Senior Men and Women races take part at the same time, with three women making up a team, whilst the men’s teams consisted of four runners.   Once again I was in the Bella Harriers B Team but this week I was running the final, aka glory, leg.  The kids’ races took longer than anticipated to complete and I had a long wait before getting my chance to run around the 4000m course. 

Pic by Jim Carson

This gave me time to chat with those who had completed the first leg and I was surprised to hear that most of them were taking longer today than last week.  This was a bit of a disappointment as I was so keen to run faster than last week.  By the time that I set off there was no one to be seen in front of me.  I saw Barry Edwards doing his warm down along the course and set off to catch up with him.  The course was by now very heavy going and I made my way through the mud and puddles catching Barry and then running entirely on my own along side the pitch and putt park and around the back of the velodrome before heading through the most flooded part of the course and uphill slightly.  I felt as if I was working hard but there was nothing I could do when a Greenock Glenpark runner caught me.  Although I did try and latch on to him and use him in a positive way, he was a faster runner than me. 

The only negative point was in the final strait when I gave it my all as I approached the line.  Although I was following Ross, the marshal was vociferously directing me to the other Finish tunnel; I changed my direction accordingly but then noticed the marshal at that tunnel directing me into the initial tunnel.  I changed direction again and crossed the line with my watch indicating 18:59.  I know that the marshal’s are volunteers and that they were doing there best so I didn’t let it get to me.  Although I was slightly less accommodating when I found out that my official time was 19:00, as I must have lost at least a second because of the misdirection at the end. 

However the official results also had me starting in 15^th place and finishing in 15^th place, which confused me.

Better Performance

Although I had taken 3 or 4 more seconds to complete the course than last week, I felt that I had performed better.  Garmin users have advised me that this week’s course was 400m longer than the one at Kilmarnock, which would explain why my time was slower, when I had felt that I had run faster.

My team placed 15^th out of 21, although to be fair 4 of the others were incomplete teams.  Graeme Gemmell had stepped down from the A team as he had to leave early and ran the first leg in a great time of 15:49; Stu Mullholand ran the second leg in 17:07 and Ally Shields the third leg in 17:08.

Our A Team placed 7^th and the C team 19^th

Silver Ladies

In the Women’s Relay a fantastic effort from our A team of Claire MacAulay; Kristina Greig and Bernie O’Neil earned them runners up spot to a very strong Kilbarchan Team.  With an impressive total of four Bella Harrier Women’s Teams the B team placed 6^th, the C team 9^th and the D team 10^th.  Congratulations to them all especially those running in their first ever cross country race.