I had a varied afternoon lined up at Linwood. The main event was 1500m though I had long jump and a leg in the 4 x 100m relay on either side. I didn't ease down for this, doing a full training week leading up to it. Indeed, the day before, I did a heavy track session at the same Linwood track with Inverclyde pair Chris Mackay (runner up in this year's Scottish National Cross Country) and Mark Pollard (former Scottish Cross Country Champion). It was a rather brutal workout in a gusty wind of 2km, 1km, 2km, 1km. My times were 5:58, 2:58, 6:14 and 3:00. Theirs were a little quicker! Total distance was 7.5-8 miles including warm up and warm down.
Like the Mens League, the Central and South of Scotland League permits two athletes per event, "A string" and "B string." I was assigned the B number in the long jump where I shocked myself with a leap of 4.82m. One of my old Whitemoss friends, Lorraine Boyd, certainly did an alright job marking my run up accurately for me. This was 7cm away from my personal best which I set in September 1998. It won me the B string. So far so good.
I lined up on a crowded 1500m start line with Andrew Coulter on Cambuslang duty with me. I battled through the log jam to move into the lead after 200m and went through 400m in 67 seconds. I sensed an athlete on my shoulder. Deja vu from when Robert Russell did the same in the Mens League 5000m. In a bid to keep the pace up and drop whoever it was, I kept the pace as constant as possible. It certainly didn't slow since I completed 1200m in 3:21. I lifted the pace as much as I could muster. Coming into the final 100m, the mystery athlete, Paul Leck of Kilbarchan, came past me to win. I finished a frustrated 2nd place in a time of 4:10.5. I kicked fresh air in disgust, not with Paul (we shook hands and chatted after the finish) but with myself for allowing myself to be outdone in 2 consecutive races, doing all the work then losing out. A harsh tactical lesson.
Since I was the only one of the quartet who could perform an adequate crouch start, I took first leg in the 4 x 100m relay. I handed over to a Cambuslang parent, Cliff (forgotten his second name) then Colin Stephen and finally Andrew Coulter. Between us, we secured a convincing second last place.
In all honesty, with 10km races on offer at Rouken Glen and Carluke, I would rather have done one of them. Maybe for the final league meeting on 3rd July, I will get time off for good behaviour.
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