Clydestride

I was looking forward to this. It was going to be a mixed terrain run starting from Partick. I was up early got my breakfast and then drove to my work where I left the car and walked to Partick Morrison's.

The day was lovely, I sat in Morrison's and had a bacon roll and a coffee, which in hindsight was probably not the best thing to have an hour before the race. Went outside talked to most of the people that I knew from other races and forums. Stretched off and did a quick warm up.

Then we were all called, rules explained and then a walk to the start line which was about a 1/4 of a mile away. It was a fairly small race looked just under a 100 people. I started quite near the back. I like to gauge how everyone else is and try to keep it to my race.

We were off, I find in every race unless you are right at the front you have no hope of getting anywhere in the pack until about a mile down the road. I tried to stick to a pace but felt either I was running up the person in front or some one was running up the back of me. My pacing for the first 4 miles was shocking in the way I was too fast. I was averaging 8 min miles which was about 1:30 faster than I wanted to do for the first 10 miles.

I ran along the Broomlielaw, past the Riverboat Casino and through Glasgow Green to Dalmarnock. All of which I cycle when I am cycling to my parents. It was then out and round some of Dalmarnock/Parkhead. To get back along the Clyde again. This is where the first checkpoint was, yes I had made up some bags for each checkpoint. A couple of miles before the checkpoint I met up with a couple of people, Laura and Sean and the 3 of us made idle chit chat to the checkpoint. At which Laura shot of into the distance never to been seen by me again.

After a quick top of of water bottles. It was time to head to the next checkpoint and half way point Strathclyde Park. I lost my way here a couple of times, as did a few other runners. Felt not to bad at mile 15 but we were now running on grass/fields to road back to grass. I did have on my trail shows for the entire run but felt as though my road trainers would of been better at this point. As the grass etc was hard better suited still for road trainers. Time I got to Strathclyde park my legs were heavy and I was slowing down. I had a 10 minute rest here to regroup and head off through the park. After I was through Strathclyde it started to get more sparse for seeing other competitors and I totally relied on signs etc.

You can guess where I am going with this :D, I got lost again. There was no visible signs that I could see, so I waited till the next person came along which was not too long thankfully. Unfortunately they were in the same position as me and did not know which way to go. So the both of us waited until someone came along that did. Once that happened I was off again but only for a mile where I stopped again as there was no signage. booo boo. Fortunately I saw one of the other runners up to my left running so I just followed him. By this time some of the areas through the woodland area was hard going and shin deep in mud (I hope). The wooden walkways at areas were rotten and could of fallen through some of them. Hence why I just walked over most of them.

By the time I got the the last checkpoint, Sean had caught up with me and the 2 of us just walked/ran from there onwards. I was done. The last 1/4 of the race was for me intense a lot of incline which I knew about as we were to finish in New Lanark. What I did not anticipate was that after the incline we ran back down again to run back up again. The to run about a mile past the finish to turn back on ourselves to come down to the finish.

At crossing the finish line I saw all the family there to support me which is always a great sight to see. I was handed a bottle of beer which was drank there and then :D.

Disappointed with my time of 7:45. In all honesty I do not know what went wrong or where it did. I was aiming for under 7hrs. Next time perhaps