Round Arran Relay

WHERE WIZ MANNY GORMAN? Unreliable man! Apart from his non-appearance Arran was a great success ... or should that be Arran was a great success because of his non-appearance, ha ha ha!

On Friday morning, fifteen runners were lined up to don the black and gold ... by one point on Friday night, after a few telephone calls, emails and A TEXT MESSAGE, that number had reduced to 10; the general consensus being folk would rather not run, but go into work instead. The last two to pull out (Steffen and Ana) were thankfully persuaded to change their minds. Phew! On the day we had 11.

Hot weather contributed enormously to tough running conditions, meaning whichever leg anybody did was gonna be hard work! Notable performances were produced from four top team members in the form of Stevie McLoone, Mark McColl, Steffen Gorgas and Kate Jenkins. All the rest of the performances were pretty mediocre ... only kidding; everyone should be happy with their excellent performances except Archie who pulled his calf muscle again, and hobbled the second half of his leg (no pun intended), almost allowing The Couch to overtake him!!

On arrival back to the finishing point in Brodick, the results from each leg were gradually posted. The original line-up for the A team had Kate pencilled in to run the first leg North, followed by Stevie, then Mark. The results therefore showed Kate had run an incredible first leg to finish in second place; people were excitedly talking about a wummin running so well! Wow, she runs for Westerlands! I'm sure I overheard someone say, wasn't that the mad girl who cycled half-way round the island first? Well, that is quite close to the truth, but what actually happened was this: Kate planned to run the first leg then bike round the island, however she was categorically told by the Jobsworth bus driver that she couldn't take her bike on the bus. In reaction Kate advised the stubborn driver that he was A FUCKING WANKER! Ha ha ha! So this left us with a last minute change of plan, where Stevie ran in Kate's place and Mark did the second leg, and Kate cycled a 20 mile roundabout route to the start of leg three.

Thankfully, the rest of the legs were run smoothly and efficiently. A chap called John Duthie, who some may know or at least recognise as a previous Westerlands member (from four years ago, when Bill Sheridan invited him to join, which he duly did, and then didn't run a single race for the Westies!), ran for the B team on the third leg north, and came in one place behind Kate, albeit about 9 minutes behind!

The teams did the club proud in the end with the A team finishing in a fairly decent 9th place overall, and the B team not too far behind in 12th. About 20 teams ran. So, an enormous thanks to all those who gave up a day at work to compete for the Black and Gold.

Times: N1(11.5 miles), N2(10.5 miles), N3(10 miles), S1(7.5 miles), S2(9miles), S3(8miles).

1st Irvine 5.21.25 (N1 - 63.25, N2 - 57.29, N3 - 56.37, S1 - 43.57, S2 - 51.11, S3 - 48.36)

2nd Central 5.30.48

3rd Garscube 5.53.35

9th Westerlands A 6.22.43 (N1 - 64.21, N2 - 65.45, N3 - 68.02, S1 - 48.49, S2 - 65.38, S3 - 70.08)

12th Westerlands B 7.41.24 (N1 - 82.50, N2 - 83.32, N3 - 77.03, S1 - 60.20, S2 - 74.15, S3 - 83.24)

Posted by Blair Millen on Wed 30 Nov -0001 | comments are closed

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