West District Relays

The West Relays were held at a new-for-me venue at Irvine Royal Academy. The weather was ideal - bright sun, not at all cold - and the trail was a good one. It was basically flat with good underfoot conditions and the only possible complaint was that there was no place to 'hide', you had to be working all the way. The runners from whatever club enjoyed it. The area is good grass which was laid on sand and the wet weather just drains away very quickly. The club had two boys teams, two girls teams and two men's teams: the ladies only had one team out and of that only one runner was present. A wee disappointment - it would have been good to have had teams in all events.

Marina ran well in the Ladies race - competitive all the way and a good finish. In the Men's race, Paul Carroll had a good first stage for the A Team with Ian Robertsn running even better for the seond leg and then David Brown had a vey good run for a guy in only his second race as a Senior man. John Foley had a good solid run on the last stage. In the B Team, Gary Dick wasn't far behind Paul on the first stage with young Ryan Nelson having a steady run on the second in his first ever race for the Seniors before handing over to Bobby Young with Peter Rudzinski finishing for the team.

The Girls teams all ran well - most of them were in their first ever race over the country and none disappointed. Kirsty Alexander and Mirren Wright did a super job on the first stage with Mirren not far behind Kirsty and still being in the first two thirds of the field. Chloe had a hard battle with a big girl from Inverclyde - halfway round the first lap she was behind her, then when next seen she was about 50 metres up, then dropped back but at the end she picked up not only the Inverclyde girl but three others as well! Kirsty Kelly also ran on the second stage and was not far behind Chloe. Diane Nicholson ran a very effective and well judged last leg for the club - she didn't start too fast and picked up a few places in the finishing straight. For the boys, Connor Shields had a good day at the races on the first stage with shot putter Lewis Wood having a change of event for the day. On the second stage, Tony Dolan picked up a lot of bodies on the two laps and Scott McDade had an enjoyable run in the good conditions - his pal Keir Martin will be sorry he missed it! On the last stage Peter Bowman had a good run to pick up more places and Mark Busby stepped up a distance or two and bearing that in mind, ran well. It was a good day out.