Stirling 10k

Results

My first road race as a V50, and my first attempt at the Stirling 10k. A fast flat course that doubles as the Scottish Athletics 10k championships.

Conditions were ideal with torrential rain and gusty winds. My race plan was to scrape under 37 minutes by exerting as little effort as possible in the first half.

I started ridiculously slowly and watched as streams of runners poured past as I pottered along, not really racing until the turn around 5km. There was a bit of a diagonal headwind on the way back at first, so I tried to take shelter with some eschelon running, but this didn’t help much, so I just pushed on to get a gap on Andy McLinden, 1st V60.

With 1km to go it was looking tight to finish inside 36 minutes something, so I needed to suddenly kick into making an effort with about 800 metres to go.  A shout from Ewan Jack on the final corner gave me the encouragement to chase down Lesley Chisholm on the line, with us both recording 36:59. So I was quite pleased to achieve my target time, with less than a second to spare.

James Callender and Michael Sweeney were the other Westies running, both out of sight after the first kilometre.  James ran a massive PB with 34:35 (34:30 chip), and Michael had a solid run with 35:46 (35:41 chip).