Rosie Time at Eglinton parkrun

Pre Race

I had already decided to do the Eglinton parkrun when old school buddy Rosemary Blackwood contacted me through Facebook to let me know that she was back in Scotland for a short time and was meeting up with Sandra Murphy for coffee at the Tournament Cafe after the race.

I was hoping to look my best but unfortunately my worst sleep for ages had me looking a bit rough and feeling sluggish as I drove down through the icy fog to Ayrshire.  I arrived in plenty of time for the usual pre race pit stop, warm up and catch up with running buddies.  At 9:30am, with the temperature just creeping above 0c, I lined up, in my shorts, with some 94 other hardy souls and Neil Ash sent us on our way around the 5k mixed terrain course.  Icy paths meant that there were a couple of small changes to the course, resulting in even more of the route than usual being off road.

Cross Country Running?

  After the first kilometre, I found myself between Irvine AC doyens Jim White and Mike Flinn.  I would have been more than happy to finish between these two, who have amassed 38 Eglinton parkruns between them, with course PBs of 20:47 and 21:51 respectively.  My only other outing had taken me 24:34 and I was hoping to take at least one minute off of this.  With Garmin indicating that the 1st k had taken me 4:44, I knew that I would have to work harder to achieve my target.  I held off a couple of challenges from Mike but couldn't prevent him from overtaking me at around 2k.  It was then a question of using Mike to help drag me around the remaining 3k.  A strong finish saw me crossing the line in a time of 22:42, which was frankly a lot faster than I had hoped for.

After getting my breath back, I handed in my token, which indicated that I had placed 26th, before chatting with various old and new running buddies and enjoying a decent warm down.  Incidentally this took my mileage above my previous November record and bears well for the future.

Post Race Smiles

A quick change and I joined some fellow runners and volunteers in the Cafe where I rewarded myself with a coffee and roll in Ayrshire bacon, of course.  Rosie joined Sandra and I later and we caught up on some of our life events which had passed since we last met, some 38 years ago.  Let's hope it's not another 38years before we meet again!  Sure to want me back another day...

Results

Pics by Sandra Hunter