Dunbartonshire Championships

It was a cold and wintry day ........................

Kirkintilloch was that and more and the trail was an absolute disgrace. Traditional trails were muddy, mucky, had fences (sometimes with barbed wire) to climb and ditches to jump. The trail had no fences and no ditches which would have suited me, being basically a road runner, but it did have frozen ruts, plant roots protruding through the soil and slippery surfaces galore. More a trail for a mountain goat than an athlete. This is no complaint about the winners - they all deserved to win. It is a criticism of the trail and, indirectly of those who laid it. I used to live in Lenzie (for fourteen years) and ran over 100 miles a week on all surfaces in the area. We NEVER ran in the fields concerned because of the danger of twisted ankles and other injuries. The fields on the other side of the main road, out towards Twechar, would have been much more suitable. All credit then to those who took part in the race and all of our runners without exception performed admirably. I would hope that for next year we would have a rep on the County Committee who can persuade them to go elsewhere! maybe Clydebank next year?

Traditional courses, although hard, were also modified for the children because you did not want to test their hardness or toughness - rather you wanted to have them come back next year. To simply shorten the Senior trail and include the same ruts, roots and dangers is not good enough. It is no surprise that many young athletes dropped out injured, or worse - disheartened. Let's hope for better next year.

Super intra club races between Ian Robertson and Gary Dick in the men's race where Gary had the best race I've seen from him and he is clearly on the way back to top form and Ian Robertson performed well above previous performances on a trail that did not suit him. Ann Murray and Kath Scott had a ding dong battle with Kath just coming out on top. Marina McCallum made up the third place team.

A comment from Peter Bowman who won the U17 Men's race when I told him that it was not a race for tactics but for brute strength and ignorance - "Well I'll work on the ignorance." Chloe Wright was the most unlucky athlete when she was fourth and out of the prizes with a girl from Central Region (a guest runner) winning and taking gold. Phil is doing the right thing and protesting on her behalf. Kirsty Kelly in the U15 Girls race won second place after Diane Nicolson and Claire Read dropped out injured after a lap. Diane had had a bad fall in the first lap and hurt even more a football injury sustained during the week.

So come on, Committee, get someone on the Committee and get the races to OUR course next year - Kirkintilloch Olympians had clearly been training on the trail for weeks beforehand, let's get the advantage for 2009!