Dunbartonshire XC Relays

The Dunbartonshire cross-country relays moved back to Garscube Estate this year and we were fairly hopeful of retaining our title. I was still carrying a hip strain which I thought I could run through, so I tried not to aggravate it with a minimal warm-up. Joe handed over to me in fourth place and well in touch with the leaders at the end of the first leg, but after a few hundred metres it looked like I only had a chance of catching the runner in third place (by now) while the other two were pulling away. I was also concerned about being caught by the runner from the University team who I suspected might not be far behind. Jumping down the first set of steps, where Garscube House once stood, I lost my footing and fell forward, sliding along the wet grass on my shoulder, although I got to my feet uninjured and ran on. At the top of the first major climb I ran on the wrong side of a taped-off area and had to go back, which cost me a few more seconds, although it turned out later that most people had made the same mistake. The two leaders were out of sight when I crossed back over the bridge, but I did move into third place just before the course turned away from the Kelvin and headed through the trees, and by now I had got the hang of spotting the white course markers. I had no trouble with the remainder of the course and finished in 14:39, only a few seconds down from my time from 2006, on a course which if not identical was very similar and probably slightly under 4K.

On the third leg, Marco kept us in third place and made up some ground on second place, which looked like being the best we could hope for, as we were 80 seconds off the lead, but Ben started demolishing this deficit straight away. The gap had been reduced to about 22 seconds by the time he crossed the bridge for a second time, which was just over halfway, and it was only 10 seconds at the access road from the roundabout, so it was no surprise when Ben appeared from the undergrowth in first place, having run the fastest leg of the day. I was third fastest for Garscube and only about 6 seconds slower than the fastest Vet.