West District Relays, 15th October 2006

Jane Leaps into League Lead as Westies Men are in Sixes and Sevens!

There was a good turnout of Westies for the West District Relays at Irvine Beach Park. In the women’s race, a late call-off by Gillian meant that there wasn’t a full women’s team, but it didn’t stop our team finishing 16th. Jane sprinted round the trail for the first leg before handing over to Pauline . This gave Jane about 18 minutes to recover before starting again on the third leg, which she managed to run only 14 seconds slower than her earlier stage. It also gave her bonus points for running two races in the one day, thereby catapulting her to the top of the Westies league; the first time ever that that position has been held by a woman!

Having established that the Westies men would be in no position to pick up any of the major honours, the team manager decided to mix up the teams…unbeknown to his fellow Westies. So Don, who thought he was handing over to Chris on leg 2, actually handed over to Rob, whilst Hamilton ended up passing over to Chris. This made for an exciting leg 2, as it was only within the last few hundred metres that Chris managed to overhaul Rob. Any suggestion that the change of teams/numbers was in fact a complete cock-up by the team manager was strenuously denied, of course!

Further confusion reigned at the end of the second stage when Chris finished and neither Jason nor David knew which one should head off. Eventually David ( ” I was waiting for someone to tell me to go”) hurtled out the gate, en route for the fastest Westies time of the day before handing over to Dave for the glory leg. Meanwhile Jason had rather a good run too, just 2 seconds slower than Hamilton, before handing over to Alan who hurtled round the grass and sand to bring the B, sorry A, team into the finish.

Mention should be made of Drew, who sacrificed a team place ( we had 9 men for 8 places) but didn’t have enough time to get dressed up to take the third woman’s place. Finding a ginger wig to impersonate Gillian proved an impossible task in such a short time.

Results

Women

1 City of Glasgow 44:53

16 Westies 51:55 (Jane 18, 16:36; Pauline 20, 18:29; Jane 16, 16:50)

Men

1 Inverclyde 47:12

31 Westies B 58:19 (Hamilton 48, 16:02; Chris 37, 13:50; David R 32, 13:27; Dave C 31, 15:00)

39 Westies A 62:38 (Don 38, 14:44; Rob 39, 15:23; Jason 40, 16:04, Alan 39, 16:27)