Now that summer is drawing to a close, the focus of the club’s endurance runners switches to cross country with the district, regional and national relays in October now fast approaching. There are though still plenty of road running events most notably the Great Scottish Run at the end of September. Hopefully this year will see a good turnout of cross country runners across all age groups.

Listed below are a number of the notable endurance running performances from the last few weeks.

MARATHON

Lewis Priest finished 2nd on his marathon debut at Fort William on 29^th July. With the route described at scenic and undulating (i.e. hilly) and much of it on forest trails his time of 3 hours 1 minute 10 was most impressive.

10K ROAD

Rhian Dawes was first female in the Sandwich (Kent) 10k on 24^th June in a time of 41.13 and on 19^th August Donna Finlayson completed the Paisley 10k in 44.40

OTHER ENDURANCE

Gerry Craig placed 4^th in the John Lucas Memorial Round Strathaven ultra-run completing the 50 mile course in 7 hours 10 minutes

PARKRUNS

Club athletes took part in various parkruns in the UK and abroad during the summer months. Sandy Gardner travelled the furthest (over 4,000 miles) to Florida for the Clermont Waterfront parkrun beating the 2,800 miles that Thomas Connolly and I travelled to run in the Volgograd parkrun, Russia.

Closer to home, Claire Thompson strung together a series of excellent performances finishing first female at Pollok (30^th June and 7^th July), Portobello (14th July) and Drumchapel (21^st July). Becky Dumphy was 1^st Female at Tollcross (28^th July). 

Andy Law was 2^nd male at Ganavan Sands, Oban (4^th August) and Robyn Connolly was 2^nd female (18^th August). Saul McGlennan was 3^rd at Harrow (25^th August). The fastest time posted was Paul Lennie who ran 18.49 at Victoria Park on 18^th August and with Peter Jardine running 19.02 at Springburn on 14^th July and myself running 19.03 at Springburn on 4^th August we are hopeful that we can get a strong Vet 50 team competing this year.