Club Championships

The field for the club Championships was better than I had expected with twelve competitors in the men's race and four in the women's event. There were contests in all the young athletes races from Under 11 to Under 20 with the exceptions of the Women's U17 and U20. The men's race was one of the best in recent years with Ian Robertson a worthy winner. The race started with Ryan Savage moving away early on but having to drop out shortly after the start of the second lap. That left Ian, John McArthur and John Kennedy in a wee group at the front. Ian soon took the lead and was never headed to win fairly comfortably with John Kennedy in second. It was good to see runners like Paul Carroll, John McArthur, and brothers Derek and Peter Halpin back in action. Ian ran better than I have seen him and with a bit more confidence and a bit more work he would be finishing much further up the field in every race. Pamela won the Ladies race from Ann Murray with Fiona McCue looking strong in third place, just ahead of Marina McCallum. If the top six or seven at least in the men's race turn out with Prasad, Gary and James in the National we would certainly have our best club result for many years.

In the younger ones races, Ryan Nelson got the reward for two years hard training when he won the Under 20 Men's race for the Cameron Shield, Peter Bowman took the Under 17 championship in style, Tony Dolan was suffering from tiredness after a football match in the morning but won from Lewis Woods, Under 13 David Newton confirmed his good running this winter when he just defeated Connor Shields and Andrew Hunter defeated Lewis Hay by only one second to take the Under 11 title.

The talented and consistent Rachel Busby had the expected win in the Under 11 girls race from Caitlin Reid who although quite new to the sport looked like a talent for the future, Kirsty Alexander won the Under 13 girls race and Claire Reid won the Under 15 race from shoeless Kirsty Kelly. Kirsty lost a shoe early on and decided it would be easier with no shoes than with just the one but still finished less than a minute behind Claire. It was a good day's sport over challenging courses made more difficult by being open to the winds blowing across the fields. Everyone enjoyed it and there were signs of good results to come in the Nationals at Falkirk.