West District Cross Country Relays

10th October 2009

Christine, Deborah and Ellie had a great autumnal afternoon out, taking turns jogging around some muddy school fields in Stepps.

Ellie did well for the first 200 metres, keeping hot on the heels of the whipper-snapper crop topped, tiny-panted lot before her age/untrained lungs/tweaked nerve/pill-overload kicked in and she turned into a yellow tortoise, battling against a strong temptation to disappear behind the trees for a quick fag. Unfortunately, the men were looking on, offering quiet but firm grunts of encouragement and preventing sneaky escape.

Christine finally was able to rocket out of the starting blocks and, with her wonderfully floral backside, produced a steady run through the mud, passing on to the star of the day, Deborah, plucked from the safety of her home by Dastardly Don, after our dear Muffy developed a not-so-fluffy hamstring problem and had to pull out last week. Deborah put in a cracking show, and without even breaking into sweat, managed to pull back several of the hundred or so places lost by peg-leg-cross-country patch Ellie, in an impressively strong run. She later kindly signed our vests- so we have yellow and black proof that she ran with us!

The men made it look so easy- snake did his snakey thing- although it was allegedly just a ‘jog’ in honour of the PS demands tomorrow. Chris’s run benefited from my frequently pointing his camera lens at him, transforming him from his jibbing, sideways shuffle, to an upright canter, fit for a captain.

Braveheart, and new Westie, Steven Grant put in a gallant third leg, passing over to Don, now apparently recovered from his pig pox, or whatever it was ailing him earlier in the year. Our shouts of encouragement in his last 500 hundred metres misfired, prompting the young lad from Helensburgh (maybe he was called John or Don or something and misheard us) who was just in front of him to spurt forward overtaking several others in an astounding coronary-risking sprint to the finish line.

A fantastic, lung-busting afternoon was had by all. Well done folks.

Full results