National X/C Championships Falkirk 2011 & Other News
February 21st, 2011The National Cross Country Championships, the culmination of the cross country athletics season traditionally takes place each year in Falkirk’s Callendar Park, which provides both a wonderful setting and challenging underfoot conditions. Add to this the coating of early Saturday morning snow on the hills and the backdrop was perfect for the huge turn out of runners from all over the country, including the Borders and Galashiels in particular. Despite the return of the white stuff, the ground on the undulating parkland was simply wet underfoot and got wetter and muddier as the competition wore on, although with no wind and cool but not freezing temperatures, conditions were fairly close to ideal for good competitive running.
In the junior races, four runners make up a team and in the Under 15 boys only 3 could be mustered but the competition nevertheless drew out some very good individual performances from Rowan Marr, Fraser Wardhaugh and Paul Henney. Rowan bettered his last year’s time by over half a minute and his excellent run in 14 minutes and 36 seconds over the 4 kilometre course placed him 14th from 107 runners, 17 places higher than last year. Fraser has never raced at the nationals before and did very well to finish 45th in 15.47 and Paul Henney, moving up an age category from last year when he had to pull out through injury wasn’t far behind him in a very creditable 16.11.
Last year, the Gala U15 girls captured silver medal position but with a depleted team, only Kerry Sandilands was there to fly the flag for Gala. Her individual performance however was far and away her best performance of the season and proved that hard work and training pays dividends. She finished well up the 76 strong field in an exceptionally good 16th position in 16.54.
The senior women’s race covers 8 kilometres of the parkland and 7 Gala women took on the distance, led home in quite scintillating form by Dianne Lauder who finished in a superlative 9th place out of the 201 field in a time of 31.01, despite a fall. This position represents the highest placed woman Gala Harrier ever and is a remarkable achievement, bettering her last year’s record breaking 11th place. Rachel Fagan had to pull out through illness but Dianne was supported by good runs from Fiona Dalgleish (35.57) Gillian Duncan on her welcome return from maternity leave (37.38) Eileen Nicol (39.16) Fiona Shepherd (39.34) and Dawn Grant (43.07) all contributing well to their 11th place overall from 21 senior women teams.
A huge field of 451 senior men included 11 Harriers who took on the 12 increasingly muddy kilometres as the last race of the day. In another sterling effort, Graeme Murdoch led home the team in a grand time of 44.08, finishing in 62nd position. There were good runs too from the rest of the lads, both the seasoned campaigners and those new to this level of competition; Fergus Johnson (46.04) David Moffat (49.20) Magnus Inglis (51.16) Colin McCall (52.09) Paul Daly (52.12) Derrick Brydon (53.24) Tony Lunn (53.32) Alistair Lawrie (54.59) Dave Nightingale (55.27) and Malky Gowans (55.37) all represented their club with credit with a 16th place from 30 teams.
Representing his club with even greater credit earlier in February was veteran Bob Marshall who, despite a troublesome hamstring took the silver medal in the National Vets Cross Country at Kirkcaldy, following it up with his run next day at the previously-reported Norham Winter Cross Country Series which sees him as unassailable in his age category there.
On the other side of the world and in the heat of Hong Kong, not-quite-so-old Billy McCulloch took on the marathon distance once again and with little training due to injury nevertheless trotted round the streets in a very respectable 3 hours 48 minutes and 50 seconds.
The weekend after next sees the final leg of the Borders Winter Cross Country series, to be held in Dunbar on Sunday 27th February – juniors at 11.30, seniors at 12 noon.
