GALA

Thought I’d give the second leg of the Borders XC a go yesterday.

A very windy and fairly tough nine mile route round the wind farms on Saturday had convinced me that my foot wasn’t too bad.

Got down to the start at Gala swimming pool to find a good sized crowd of runners already milling about.

Nice to see that among the good sized crowd there was quite a contingent of Dunbar runners among them.

While I was doing a wee bit of a warm up I was trying to remember the route, so that I could explain it to Nick. I knew there was a fair bit of climbing and I had vague recollections of one section where you run along one side of a wall..through a gate..then double back along the other side of the same wall. But could I accurately remember the route? Could I hell. Turns out (in defence of my failing memory) that it’s actually been a few years since I last did this race. It further turns out that we were in Gala back in February for this race and that the reason I didn’t run it was that I was in an office doing the results – I’d completely forgotten that (which is a searing indictment on my failing memory).

Anyway. The race itself… Decided that I’d start round about the middle of the field as I wasn’t sure how my foot would hold out and I didn’t want to push it. As it was I felt fine. I think once you start racing, anyway, the adrenaline kicks in and a lot of niggles etc just seem to vanish.

I had got my version of the route completely wrong when I was explaining it to Nick – but, in my defence, I think I still got the general “idea” of the route. There was a wall – there was a “there and back” – just not the wall I thought it was!!

Ended up, for a lot of the race, running close to Nick, Craig and Willie Jarvie.

One point, that I did correctly remember, was a long steep(ish) down hill section. God knows how but I just favoured a sort of heel strike motion and went for it!! Most of the route was more of an “extreme trail” type route. Couple of burns to cross though – but I decided to take them pretty sedately rather than risk aggravating my sore toe.

All was well with the world until, about a quarter of a mile from the end, I put my foot deep into a patch of mud. The putting the foot in was OK, but as I pulled it out I got a sharp pain in the “injured” toe.

Managed to get going again and was fairly happy with my run overall.

Try and have a fairly easy week then see how I’m feeling for HELPs annual “Goats Gallop” on Sunday.