Ayrshire XC Relay 20/10/12

     Thanks to my wonderful employers for the 8 hour warm up before this one!!...Legs felt awful jogging round the course when i arrived but eased off a bit by the time the race started.With so many guys from the club injured or ill we had no chance of winning this year but had a wee chance of a medal.Stevie Stirrat had a fine run on the opening leg to finish 6th ,i ran the 2nd this year,didnt feel great but had an ok run getting us up to 3rd.Havnt seen results so don't know how times compared to others.Colin Miller 3rd leg and Mark Livingston 4th,held onto 3rd place with Mark running 30 seconds faster than last year....All in all not a bad result.

Aviemore 10k 14/10/12

Yes,bit of race form at last!.....having injured my foot the previous weekend while doing a 10 miler i was forced to take 6 days off training and didnt think i would be able to run this race up until the Friday night.Thankfully the heel responded to a lot of stretching,ice and rest and was no problem come the race day. We arrived on Saturday 2 hours before the Family Fun Run Mile race.Lesley ,james and i all ran it although it was harder work than i had imagined due to James hitting the Wall after half a mile and me having to run the rest of the way with him on my shoulders!Great fun though! So the next morning,buses took the runners from the Aviemore Highland Resort out to the start of the 10k in Glenmore and the Half marathon at Badaguish.With nearly 500 in the 10k and 1000 in the Half the place was mobbed at 8 o'clock in the morning.Got a really good warm up for an hour up at Glenmore which was needed just to keep warm!It was freezing but no wind at all so ideal for racing. So,at 10 o'clock we set of back down the Ski rd to Aviemore with Grant Wilkie of Costorphine taking the lead from the off.I managed to catch him early on and hung on to what was a decent pace.A few times i ended up at the front but Wilkie started to get a slight gap again heading down towards the town.When we turned to run past the Old Bridge Inn i had closed the gap and was on his shoulder.So entering the field at the finish i managed to muster a bit of a sprint to win by 2 seconds in 32.50,which is my best time since the ormidale 10k in 2006! Well chuffed with my run and best of all no aches or pains injury wise.Great weekend,will try and make it up for the Half marathon next year...

George Cummings Road Relay 29/09/12

Now when Football match reports talk about a team being "decimated by injuries " i know what they mean!With Davy going to miss the first few relays due to his recent illness ,Alex out with his foot injury and then George and Jamie both injuring their calves in the run up to this race,it was down to myself ,Pat,Mark and new recruit Stevie to put in a decent showing.....

Pat found it hard going on leg 1,finishing 38th in 15.57.I ran leg and felt heavy legged but strong bringing us through to 16th in 14.14. Steve had a fine run on leg 3 clocking 15.54 handing over to Mark ,who had a solid run in 16.01 to keep us in 16th place...all in all it was as good as we could expect on the day.The B team all had solid runs with Jim White making a welcome return on the last leg.Looks like theres only a few from Irvine going to the McAndrews on Sat....Next up for me the Aviemore 10k next week then the Ayrshire xc relay