I travelled down to the town of Kirkcudbright in Dumfries & Galloway on Friday night to take part in the half marathon on Saturday. The race is organised by the local secondary school and has been run every year since 1982. A healthy field of 182 runners took on the half marathon, while another 79 took on the shorter (and somewhat arbitrary!) distance of the 11.2 km Beeches run.
I set off at a decent pace for the first few K twisting and turning through the town, but it wasn’t long until the Clydebank 10k on Thursday night took its toll as I started to struggle. To add to my struggles, by this point there was a stiff head wind, the course began a long climb from mile 5 to 8, and I ended up very isolated with runners in front disappearing into the distance and no one really close behind me.
The wind remained a difficulty for 4 or 5 miles before the course became a bit kinder with a great downhill 10th mile sheltered from the wind, which I thoroughly enjoyed! It was then a flat 3 miles back in to the town to finish again at the school. I crossed the line in 1:28:50 – my slowest half marathon for a couple of years!
The race was won in a rather fast 1:09:15 by Neil Renault of Edinburgh AC, with Lisa Finlay of Dumfries Road Runners the first lady (4th overall) in 1:18:22. On Sunday morning I took in a cycle of the local area, with some of the half marathon course included – the roads are very quiet and the area is very scenic.
