Pencaitland 10K Trail Race

The warm-up for this was a spot of Zumba, or so I believe. I am co-ordinationally challenged and was almost helpless with laughter trying to follow the moves. Looking to my left to see Richard styling it with an older chap from Dunbar was almost too much for me. But it did go on a bit long... I was worried they'd started the beginning of the race without us.

While the east coast was mired in a cold sea haar the sun burned through in Pencaitland and it was hot. Well Peter says it wasn't hot, but I was roasting and Amanda says it was hot too. The run was on very nice trails, some of which we'd covered before in our explorations off the Pencaitland cycle path. I was breathing very hard from the start and continued to do so. I passed Anne Hay around about 1K or so and was always wary that she might catch me if I slackened off. I had a kind of Scooby-Doo feeling of "I'm running really hard but I'm not getting anywhere!" when it turns out the evil mine-owner has switched on the conveyer belt and Scooby is being carried backwards to some horrible fate from which he will be rescued at the very last minute. I even checked my heart rate just to make sure I was working as hard as I felt I was. I was.

This is a small, little known race, organised by Pencaitland Primary School Parent-Teacher's Association. Maybe I could be in the prizes, I thought. But maybe there will be no prizes. Or no results. That's the kind of thing that can easily happen when non-runners organise a running event. They think its the taking part that counts. I have always hated not getting a set of results. It has happened in a few races I've been in. Its a non-logical thing because it doesn't make any difference to the outcome. Still I hate it.

I doubt I will ever see a set of results from today. We missed the prize-giving as we were inside eating cake and it presumably happened outside. Amanda missed it too, which is a shame cos she was 1st lady. I think I might have been 3rd.

On the up-side there were some very nice touches today. There were biscuit medals, which didn't last very long! There was a really nice atmosphere. The trails were great although hard and I was disappointed at how slow I was. We met up with an old friend of ours who we used to live very near to in Easter Road. He's been living in Pencaitland for the last 12 years and has a family now and has recently taken up running to beat that middle-aged waist thickening thing that happens if you work at a desk too much. He's even become a Jog Scotland Leader. (But, for some reason, doesn't wear the jersey.)

In order to save his foot Peter decided to stick with Richard, at least to start with, so he would pace himself. I think this proved better for Peter than for Richard!

Soon after we turned onto the main Edinburgh road we were plunged into thick fog and realised that not everyone had been enjoying warm spring sunshine. Back in Edinburgh it was cold and foggy and there were ill-tempered queues of traffic clotting the roads. Something - probably the football - had been on.