Edinburgh Athletic Club

The first weekend in March not only saw spring weather finally appear, but the re-emergence of road runners for the 2010 season. Saturday 6^th March had the local KB5 road race and 10 EAC runners turned up to blow away the cobwebs.

After all of the freezing temperatures of this winter, the day was almost warm. Certainly no need for gloves and t-shirts under running vests as has been the case for most of the cross country races.

Registration was busy and the more experienced runners were getting confused with the start and finish banners at KB. They certainly didn’t correspond to any previous KB5 starts/finishes. However confusion was cleared up when someone explained that there was also an orienteering event taking place on the KB campus!

I did my warm up with Malcolm who was new to this race, we jogged over the last mile so that Malcolm would know the crucial final stages, vitally important for planning finishing strategy.  

As everyone made their way to the start, that’s when I realised that although the orienteering had caused some initial confusion. The start and finish had actually changed since the last time I ran this race. So lots of apologising to Malcolm for misleading him and a few minutes to try and get an explanation of where the finish line actually now was!

This race is dominated by the host club Edinburgh University Hare and Hounds and their grown up club Hunters Bog Trotters and brown and green vests dominated on the start line. The gun went and from my position I could watch Adam P, Adam W, Malcolm and Jenny all head off at a reasonable pace and I tried a steady start, but trying to keep everyone in sight. After about ½ mile, the field had settled down and although the leaders had virtually disappeared, I could keep monitoring my club mates. After about 2 miles, I managed to get level with Adam W and was keeping the distance fairly constant between myself and Malcolm/Jenny and then looking further forward to Adam P. This never altered much for the remainder of the race.

At the end of the Braid Hills road, the route finally turns downhill and we had a much appreciated mile of downhill running. After this, there is the shock of a short hill back up to KB when everyone’s legs suddenly turn to jelly, the only consolation at this point is that it is happening to everyone, as legs adjust from 5 minutes of downhill racing to a short but steep uphill stretch. The final 400m are reasonably flat, but all ability to sprint has been sucked out of legs by this point and most people were just concentrating on maintaining their form all the way to the line.

First 5 EAC runners all finished within 1 minute of each other, not quite pack running, but still pretty good. Our best result (as is often the case these days) was by Jenny who collected 2^nd place and a 5 mile PB into the bargain! The men’s team was 3^rd.

EAC Results:

19^th Adam Priestley 27.57

20^th Malcolm Fraser 28.09

23^rd Jenny MacLean 28.21 (2^nd Female)

25^th Garry Robertson 28.45 (3^rd Vet)

26^th Adam Ward 28.49

44^th Ken Mortimer 30.57

56^th Nick Rowan 31.34

76^th Scott Innes 33.14

77^th Brian Howie 33.15

105^th Willie Gallagher 36.05

Full results at

http://haries.eusu.ed.ac.uk/?q=node/294