On Sunday, I made the short trip across to Coatbridge to take part in the Monklands Half Marathon, organised by Club Sport North Lanarkshire.
This was my second time taking part in this race, after making my half marathon debut at the same venue last year. The sunshine that greeted me last year was however replaced by fierce winds and sheets of rain, making for a particularly cold warm up.
The route takes you around 3 loops of Drumpellier Park and some surrounding roads, a fairly boring route which may partly explain why only 129 runners took part.
Like many of the local council leisure centre races, this suffers from a lack of decent advertisement and promotion. With a close proximity to both the Glasgow and Lanarkshire running clubs, this could and should be a far more popular race than it is.
Desperate for a heat, I started off fairly quickly, covering the first 3 miles in under 20 minutes. I did slow down slightly after this, but still felt good coming over the 10km mark. By this point, the weather was switching between bright sunshine and heavy downpour, leaving me with the constant annoyance of having to clear the steam from my sunglasses every 10 minutes!
Feeling strong at 10 miles, I was surprised to notice on my watch that I had beaten my previous 10 mile PB by a good 30 seconds. This gave me the boost needed to power up the fairly lengthy incline up the A752 and back into the park for the last 3 miles, coming over the line in 1:36:10, 4 minutes faster than my PB set here the previous year. A wet, cold but ultimately very enjoyable race for me!
The race was won by Robert Gilroy of Cambuslang Harriers (1:15:54), first woman was Pamela McCrossan of Clydesdale Harriers (1:33:01) and I came 24th out of the pool of 129 runners.
24th Scott Coulter 1:36:10
