Harriers at the Alloa Half Marathon, March 17

It was another big day out for Harriers on Sunday March 17, with adults racing in Alloa and juniors racing at Riccarton.

For the adults, the Alloa Half Marathon was the third race of the Club Championship, and it’s also timed perfectly as a warm-up race for assorted spring marathons. We had 14 runners in the race (although Karen W chose to run as part of Team LGT – we’re not something to be ashamed of, are we Karen?)

We’d all been watching the weather forecast in the week running up to the race and were braced for the worst, so we were pleasantly surprised to wake on Sunday morning and not be faced with high winds and deep snow drifts.

Registration was vastly improved over last year, and numbers were collected with an absolute minimum of fuss – big thumbs up to the organisers who took action to deal with last year’s queues.

Mindful of the relatively small gap between myself and Phil last year, I tried to keep him in view at the start, but by the end of the first mile he was well ahead and there was no way I was going to stick with him. He eventually toddled off to finish in a very fine 1.24.17

However, I was quite happy with the way I was going – a bit slower than last year as expected, but nothing too disappointing. My time at 10 miles was exactly a minute slower than last year’s time, but I reckon I’d worked a bit too hard, as the next 3 miles, including the infamous Menstrie Brae, were brutal. I also came to a standstill at the 11-mile water station, but was shouted at by a fellow runner which got me going again. I’d been doing calculations from about the 7 mile mark to see what I needed to do to beat the 90 minute mark, and I was starting to cut it a bit fine. But, I managed to roll down the hill and over the line, with a clock time of 1.29.52, which eventually became a chip time of 1.29.28. I’d said beforehand I was targeting 1.32, so I was quite chuffed.

Next in was Jonathan, in marathon training and in fine form, in 1.32.21, with Matt following in 1.35.13. This was 4 minute pb for Matt, so his preparation for London is obviously going well.

Jim and John were in next, in 1.35.59 and 1.37.58. This was fine effort from John, who’s barely run the distance this year apart from our hilly jaunt up Glen Kendrum and down Glen Ogle a couple of weeks ago. Nicola was our first woman home in 1.49.56, with a bit of a gap to Karen W in 1.56.19 and Susan in 1.56.59, with another pb. Alistair beat the 2-hour mark for the first time in 1.59.17, 3 minutes ahead of Julia, also setting a pb with 2.02.19. Fiona and Colin did their double act finishing together in 2.07.21, and Dave was mere seconds behind in 2.07.27.

And, big bonus, the t-shirts were a big improvement on last year’s offerings. This one might even get worn sometimes!

The Alloa Half Marathon always attracts high-quality runners, including British internationals Scott McDonald, second in the men’s race to Yared Hagos from Ethiopa, and Hailey Haining, winner of the women’s race. This makes it hard to score big points in the club Championship, so Andy and Emily stay at the top of the leaderboard There’s a bit of shuffling of the men’s pack, but with none of the top 4 women running, there’s not a lot of change. However, the good news is that we’ve already got more people doing more championship races than we did last year, and it’s shaping up to be a proper competition this year.