Tour of Fife. Race 1 Strathmiglo 5 miler - Chicken Run 29/07/09
On a day when the rain in England made the TV News, Scotland was glowing.I'll have to keep this brief as its late and I have another long day tomorrow. Tour of Fife. Brilliant. 5 races on consecutive days starting Wednesday finishing Sunday. Survival of the fittest. Different courses to suit different strengths.
Tonight, after a hard day at work, was a 5 miler to warm up the series. I fell asleep in the car on the way. Fortunately Mary was driving. Filled myself full of caffeine drink - Red Rooster - and began to buzz (not crow) around the start line which was a couple of hundred yards down the quiet road from the Strathmiglo village hall. The familiarity of the venue came from it being a stage finish/start at the Devil's Burden though tonight's 5 mile dash was 95% tarmac and quiet cycle paths with a finish through the same field as the end of stage 3 of the Devil's Burden.
While picking up numbers Mary won a spot prize of a carrier bag full of groceries and goodies - how good is that, and we haven't run a step. We are also given tech t-shirts - handy to change into after one has soaked one's club vest on such a warm evening. And a number we will wear for the next few days races.
After a chat about growing aches and anticipated strains over the next few days we were set off and maybe its just me but I felt the pace was slower than you would find at a usual 5 mile race: were folk actually pacing themselves for the forthcoming days? Or just the big hill at the first bend which drops me from being comfortably in touch with the first 2, to about 10th and sweating buckets.
A downhill and we pass Julia taking photos. Julia and Andrew signed up for this but Julia has been low with a virus and knew it would be folly to race 5 days and make it worse. So she is relegated to taking photos which she does very well catching us as we go past.
We reach a left turn and the road seems to go slightly downhill with the wind abated or to our backs. Somewhere around here is a chicken farm - I never saw it - hence the race name. I pick up three places lost on the climbs. We run for ages along a straight until we turn round a marshal and cone and head back up the same road. I drop a few more places to amongst others Stevie Boy and Baza (shirts declare names).
About to overtake the three ahead.But as we turn back down the road and some downhill I catch up a bit of ground and as we go into a field I realise where we are and that the finish is at the far end of the field. I had been going to let Baza and Stevie Boy lead us over the line but then they didn't open up on the downhill so I took the other tractor rut and ran past them on the outside taking the long way round the bottom corner and squeezing past. I went into the field in 11th place and crossed the line in 8th, but will my legs be working right for tomorrow? Watch this space. I believe its a Chariots of Fire beach run in St. Andrews. Oh and by the way 28.58 is probably a pb.
Report pb, running photos Julia H. Scenery pb
Results here already - sharp Mr. Cruickshank sharp!
173 runners
Mary's blog
The sky was so pretty I made Mary stop the car so I could take a photo.
