It was a cold autumn morning in Glasgow......

I’ve been struggling with a touch of the cold and, to be honest, some post-holiday blues this week so I decided that it would be best to give the national cross country relays at Cumbernauld a miss this year.  I still wanted a wee run on the Saturday though and had planned to go out around noon, to get whatever heat there was.

However an early night resulted in me wakening up bright and early on a bright and frosty morning with temperatures dropping below zero.  After tea and toast in bed, I decided to run my 114^th parkrun.  Well wrapped up, I scraped the ice off of the car and drove along to Pollok Park, where I joined 294 runners for the 9:30am Start. 

Despite having a half decent ‘warm up’ my legs were still feeling heavy as I started the Glasgow 5k race the 99^th time.  There was nothing I could do as a number of my running buddies darted downhill, leaving me slugging away behind them.  I ended up playing leap frog with a couple of runners before I managed to forge a gap.  That said I was sure that they wouldn’t be too far behind and that any let up on my part would be punished.  As usual, I tried to concentrate more on those in front and tried to get as close as possible to them as the race progressed.  I upped the pace and felt it straight away with 3k under my belt and pushed in more for the final kilometre and sprinted down the final 200m as if every second was a prisoner.

Of course, I would break no records today but I was happy enough to cross the line in a time of 22:16, in 67^th place.  I was a bit surprised to discover that this was actually the second fastest that I’ve run the course this year and was a whole minute faster than my last outing, on 6^th October.  So all and all not a bad showing, relatively speaking of course.

A quick ‘warm down’ and I was back in the Burrell, warming myself with a hot cup of coffee before returning home for breakfast and back to bed for a rest.  I listened to the Celtic v Kilmarnock league game and Killie won at Celtic Park for the first time in my life. Or did I dream that?

There were a number of outstanding performances at Glasgow, not least of all were those of: Clare MacAulay who continued her amazing improvement to win the women’s race, for the first time, with a new PB of 19:28; Sylvia Mulholland who finished in the top 100 for the first time, placing 86^th and 5^th woman, with a PB of 23:06;  and Derek Buchanan who smashed his previous personal best to finish in a time of 28:29.  Well done to you all, to the volunteers who make the event such a success and, of course, to everyone connected with the famous Ayrshire Killie.... "I realise the way your eyes deceived me.........."