Allan Scally relay

I was on the first leg again and set off at a pace which seemed comfortable enough to begin with and still kept me in sight of the leaders for a while, although I had forgotten to memorise any mile or kilometre markers and therefore couldn't keep an eye on my splits. Shortly after reaching Edinburgh Road I was passed by a runner from Glasgow University, who also went past a runner from Irvine, and I stayed behind the two of them for the next mile or so. By this point I was fairly confident of beating my 2007 time, and Thursday's time trial didn't seem to be having much of an effect. I began to gain on the Irvine runner and passed him while we were still on Edinburgh Road, although after a few hundred metres he started to come back and overtook me just after the lane off Buchanan Street, but didn't manage to get away. I moved ahead again during a sprint finish to the line where I handed over to... nobody, because our second leg runner hadn't turned up and the others were still out warming up. He did eventually appear and Shettleston Harriers kindly allowed us to rejoin the race later on with a time penalty.

My finishing time was 26:31 which was the fastest time for Garscube on the day, once again by just a few seconds. It was after last year's race that I started this blog and my goal for this year had been to finish inside 27 minutes. I was 14th after my leg, although the official results placed me behind the Irvine runner, probably because we had nobody to take over. We were 15th overall. Natasha had turned up only to find we had no women's team, so she ran with the first leg runners and stayed on the main road at the start and finish to avoid crossing the line.