BUPA Inter District Races in Edinburgh

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Well done to the two young athletes from the club who ran for the West of Scotland in the deep snow in Holyrood Park in Edinburgh on Saturday. Not only was there snow but the temperatures are reliably reported to have fluctuated between minus one and minus three for the occasion. Roisin McShea in her first ever representative appearance was seventeenth in 13:07 and will be a better runner for having done it. Up the age groups a bit, Peter Bowman had a good run to be eleventh of the twenty five finishers in a time of 15:05.
For an armchair watcher from the comfort of the home fireside one of the highlights was to hear Brendan Foster telling me that Tirunesh Dibaba was "literally skating along...." which might have had some bearing on the final result. That will be the same Brendan Foster who reported one athlete in a race last winter to be "literally ploughing his way through the field ...." on a day of serious mud underfoot. My own favourite of all time was when Harry Wilson was a pundit at the Olympics and commenting on a race won by Dick Quax of New Zealand his line was "Quax running second off the bend....... then a quick change of legs and away he goes." A change of legs in the finishing straight would be welcome to most runners I think.

Changing subject - last night I had a phone call from a former Harrier who has been in New Zealand for about 40 years, maybe more. Donald MacKenzie phoned from Auckland just for a blether. He had copies of the last three books and commented at one point that Mike Ryan, ex-Forth Valley AC, who has also been in NZ for about the same time, had snaffled one of the books - he had been quite friendly with Ian Donald and pinched the book with the bit about Ian in it. Mike was a top class athlete who emigrated to North Island and took New Zealand citizenship. He ran marathons very successfully: he won in Fukuoka in Japan, he was second in the Commonwealth Games and third in the Olympics. I remember him coming down to the Baths in Bruce Street with the Forth Valley club for an inter club. Inter clubs were held to fill in blank Saturdays on the calendar with clubs coming together for pack runs with slow, medium and fast packs going out over the same trail at about 10 minute intervals. The slow and medium packs had left when Mike arrived late, we waited for him to get changed and then he ran away and left us at the start of the second lap of the country. Thanks, Mike!

Why not bring back the inter club fixture? They were great fun and got us around the country and providing new trails and varied training throughout the winter. We used to have home and aways with Greenock Glenpark, Springburn, Victoria Park and at times Garscube Harriers. There were also runs at other times with Forth Valley, Dumbarton AAC, Vale of Leven AAC and even Shettleston Harriers.

Anyway, Donald says that if any Harier is in NZ on holiday then to get in touch and he will be glad to meet them and show them around or just have a chat. There are Harriers everywhere but I know of at least four in North Island right now. And then there are the half dozen in Canada.................