Realising I had a flat tyre in the morning wasn’t the best start to the day as I was meant to be driving us through for the race. Luckily Jan was able to take her car so we all piled in and headed off to St Margaret’s academy where registration was being held. There was plenty of parking at the stadium next door. When we entered the academy there were huddles of runners organising themselves. We found the registration table and queued for our declaration form. We filled in our names and these we tallied with numbers. Then we queued again for our numbers and timing chips. There was yellow numbers for the long legs and red numbers for the short legs. We each got a timing chip for our ankle and I had an extra one being the last leg. Once we were sorted we headed outside to watch the mens race start which was 10 minutes before ours. There was a lot of young fast folk and we were just hopeing not to be last. Dave came over to give us some last minute advice and then Lynne was off in the first rush of the ladies race. It was really fun to see the runners start to come in and do their changeovers. Although there was some waiting around the time went fast as there was so much going on and lots of other runners to chat to. We roughly estimated when each of us would come in so we had time for a warmup and were in position at the right time. The route was undulating and because Livingstone has so many underpasses we were able to cross under and over roads with ease and no waiting for traffic. Susie and Yan were out marshalling and gave us loads of encouragement as did the other marshals, the route was well marked with arrows and red and white tape. I couldn’t beleive it when I ran in and the comentator shouted ‘third vet team Penicuik Harriers’ it was very exciting and we were handed medals and had our pictures taken. Dave came rushing over to congratulate us and he looked so happy. It was a great day out, helped by the fact it was lovely and sunny. I hope next year we get more teams in as it was a fantastic experience.
Leg 1 00:25:37 Lynne Stevely
Leg 2 01:08:33 Jan Dawson
Leg 3 01:39:29 Romana Gorjanc
Leg 4 02:24:54 Sadie Kemp
Total 02:24:54
I was so, so proud of you all. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you-u-u-u. Your beauty & kindness made tears clear my blindness…………………Oh no, I’m away again!
Well done Ladies, what a great achievement. You’ll be going back next year!