Today was fun. It started off with a good laugh. I was driving in to the car park at Livingston's stadium to find myself in a queue which I thought was parking for the event. The thing is a bush obscured the queue and when I crept forward a bit, I realised it was the queue for the car wash which was taking up some of the parking spaces , d'oh, haha.
I walked round to the school where the race was being held and met up with the team captain. Only to find there had been loads of call offs and what not. So it ended up instead of having 3 mens teams, we just had one mens team. So I was in the A-team by default! Awesome. Understandably there were of course some grumbles of disappointment as if we had our best team out we could get top 10 easy I reckon. But you gotta play with the hand your dealt so we made the most of it.
Our young guns took the first 2 legs, Alistair coming in 24th. Then Luke ramped us up to 8th on the second leg. Then of course no matter what order the 4 of us took; the person doing the next leg was going to be overtaken. So it was Jim then David, then I took the shorter 5th leg. I started with this guy from Lasswade who rocketed off and I didn't even try to keep up, just focusing on doing the best I could. I really went for it and was overtaken once (by people on the same leg) by a Cambuslang guy. As I reached the join where the long leg and short leg came together. A Shettleston guy doing his final leg went flying by. Then approaching a bridge I could hear shouts, and sure enough a Central guy (2nd overall) overtook me. I really tried my best to make sure the 3rd place (overall) guy didn't over take me. And again at the right point, the team captain gave me a shout of encouragement. I handed over the 'baton' to James who finished things off for the A-team.
It was nice being in the A-team once. But I really hope for my club's sake that I'm not in it again (especially for shorter distances), we just have far too much talent right across the age spectrum.
Decisions
The last couple of months having been crazy and really I have ran how I have felt rather than sticking to a plan. I think I have pretty much decided not to do the Fling this year as it just doesn't feel right. The reason for this is because the Kintyre Way is the weekend after. You just have to read my report on it down the right to realise just how special that day was to me. So I have entered to do the full thing this year (well to Campbeltown anyway where the race finishes).
Whether I finish it or not I don't care. I just want to give it ago and enjoy the scenery and magic of this part of the world. I realise its 20 miles further than I have gone before. But at the end of the day, if I'm gonna do the WHW, that will be 30 miles on top of the length of Kintyre. I am going to stay entered to the fling in case I change my mind but for now my training is focused on Kintyre.
No comments:
Post a Comment