Assorted Results, Comments and Gossip

One of the best performances of the summer by a club member had to be Prasad Prasad's Sunday run at Keswick last week. It was the weekend of the Commonwealth Hill Running Championships and he had been selected for the uphill only race on the Friday. In the past it had been possible for athletes to run in both races (ie uphill only and up and downhill) and this year some of the women were lucky enough to get both. Prasad ran in his race and finished a disappointing 20th to be only fourth Scot to finish. Like all runners however he likes to make a point to selectors (remember an unselected Phil Dolan in the combined open and international at Bellahouston Park in the 70's? He beat all the Scots plus Brendan Foster!) and turned out in the Open up and down on Sunday. This was over the same course as the international had been the day before. With legs a bit dead from the previoous race he was in the first three on the way up losing ground on the flat and picking up on the climbs. On the last climb he felt that he was out of it but came back strongly and was within 25 seconds of the leader on the descent, caught the leader with half a mile to go and sat in for a 10 second breather before kicking past and finishing fast round the park at the finish. His time was faster than any of the Scottish times from the official international race! Had he been in the team, they might have got bronze instead of nothing at all.

Johnathan Farrell had a goodish summer going round the Games with the Luss meeting being the highspot in terms of number of events, points won and of course, dosh! The official placings are now out and he finds himself in sixth place in the Open up to 200 metres section with 23 points. He can be pleased with that - the only club member taking part in many meetings during the season he did the club proud and represented us with distinction. Whatever happened to the others that were in the same generation - guys like Craig Graham, Anton Russell and David Brown?

It was also good to see Frank McGowan turning out in the race at Knightswood and then again in the George Cummings race at Kilbarchan at the weekend. It is a pity that he had to return to Spain on Monday but he has said that he will try to get back again for the West Districts. If we managed to get Fearless Frank and Peerless Prasad out together it would give us an excellent start to a good team performance. The team was eleventh in the Kilbarchan race and all members contributed to the success of the team.