Reviewing my training diary at the time, my confidence was certainly up after a good run of races since the beginning of March. At the end of week commencing 17th April, I commented that I was following a training regime for Watford, referring to the BMC meeting on 28th May in which I had entered the 5000m. Before that, on 29th April, I would be contesting a race which had borne fruit in the previous 2 years with bronze medals, the Scottish 10,000m Track Championship. I had 2 weeks training behind me following the 12 Stage Relay.
The race this year moved to Glasgow's Crownpoint track, opened again after being resurfaced with the Hampden Park track surface used at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. A Friday night suited because, although the race came at the end of a working day, I had 2 days over the weekend to recover.
There were 3 races, a mixed gender one, a male B race then mine. As before, while on paper the male medallists would come from my race, the rule applied that the 3 fastest overall took the prizes. A field of 14 runners plus at least one pacemaker (I'm writing this a few months after the event so I can't quite recall) set off on the 25 laps of the track. For a long time, I felt the pace was too fast and found myself struggling to stay in contention. I sat in 5th place striding out to keep in contact while trying to conserve energy. I went through 5000m in 15:22 yet there were still 4 guys ahead of me.
It took 14 laps before I moved up from 5th and maintained it- I had earlier attempted to gain places but been hauled back. By now I was working extremely hard. I always try to be relatively fresh at halfway in a 10,000m then treat the next half as a 5000m race. I had progressed to 4th then gradually got into a medal position, 3rd, my placing for the previous 2 years. Defending champion William Mackay (Aberdeen) clearly enjoys this race as he was out in front again followed by Michael Deason (Shettleston). I eventually moved up to Michael's shoulder and overtook. I couldn't really tell if I was catching the leader or not but I do know the gap at the end was only 9 seconds. I ran probably my best race of the year to date, taking the silver medal in 30:45.44, a personal best and first time under 31 minutes on the track. Michael was 7 seconds behind. My previous bronze medal winning times would not have won a medal this year.
Numbers were slightly up with 36 men and 4 women contesting the 3 races.
The race this year moved to Glasgow's Crownpoint track, opened again after being resurfaced with the Hampden Park track surface used at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. A Friday night suited because, although the race came at the end of a working day, I had 2 days over the weekend to recover.
There were 3 races, a mixed gender one, a male B race then mine. As before, while on paper the male medallists would come from my race, the rule applied that the 3 fastest overall took the prizes. A field of 14 runners plus at least one pacemaker (I'm writing this a few months after the event so I can't quite recall) set off on the 25 laps of the track. For a long time, I felt the pace was too fast and found myself struggling to stay in contention. I sat in 5th place striding out to keep in contact while trying to conserve energy. I went through 5000m in 15:22 yet there were still 4 guys ahead of me.
It took 14 laps before I moved up from 5th and maintained it- I had earlier attempted to gain places but been hauled back. By now I was working extremely hard. I always try to be relatively fresh at halfway in a 10,000m then treat the next half as a 5000m race. I had progressed to 4th then gradually got into a medal position, 3rd, my placing for the previous 2 years. Defending champion William Mackay (Aberdeen) clearly enjoys this race as he was out in front again followed by Michael Deason (Shettleston). I eventually moved up to Michael's shoulder and overtook. I couldn't really tell if I was catching the leader or not but I do know the gap at the end was only 9 seconds. I ran probably my best race of the year to date, taking the silver medal in 30:45.44, a personal best and first time under 31 minutes on the track. Michael was 7 seconds behind. My previous bronze medal winning times would not have won a medal this year.
Numbers were slightly up with 36 men and 4 women contesting the 3 races.
Olympians Callum Hawkins, Derek Hawkins and Tsegai Tewelde were in attendance to do presentations and they are pictured with the 3 medallists below. Photo courtesy of Scottish Athletics. When your running clicks there is no better feeling and it certainly did on this occasion.
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