30 Years of Hurt Over

With the World Cup coming up people living in the UK (minus Scotlanders and probably the Welsh and Northern Irish too) are getting excited about the dream of England bring back the World Cup. Here in Dunbar where all support will be for anyone playing England, excitement over another cup has been brimming.

The East Lothian Primary Schools athletics competition is a shield highly coveted in these parts. Each year the primary schools fight it out in the Commonwealth Games stadium at Meadowbank. For the last nine years Law Primary School have been victors, only just clinching it last year by 5 points. So things had to change and I joined Mrs Lyle the PE teacher and one or two parents in trying to train up our Dunbar squad and get them fit for a win. For around 6 weeks these kids have worked their socks off and proved in training they can do well. The girls however have not quite developed that competitive spirit. They are just too nice. However, some tactical moves such as bringing in some younger competition to training and one of Mr Robertson's power blasting motivational team talks seems to have done the trick.

The big day arrived and Team Dunbar had a tough day ahead. Not only were Law after a win, Campie were also a real threat too. I had volunteered to help with the high jump indoors, so I was missing out on the other field events. At high jump I was aghast to discover many schools only teach the scissor jump. Needless to say the 2 Dunbar lads (Andrew being one of them) who have almost mastered the Fosbury Flop both won their category's. On the track things were going well for the P6's doing the 80 and 150 m. Andrew had a terrible run at the 80m, with no less than 6 false starts caused by the ref. He was rattled and managed to save his energy and get it together for the 4 x 100m relay. As the mornign passed by it was all too close for comfort with Campie winning events, then Dunbar and then Law. Worse still, Law were getting 2nd place when we won, so it was all a bit tense.

These events are usually decided on the relay where double poitns are up for grabs. We had considered the tactical move of using all fresh legs for the relay final, but some of our girls sprinters had suddenly found a competitive edge and were loving it. In fact both grils age categories stormed to victory. The lads had to settle with 2nd place in both races. They did nothing wrong, it was just they were up against faster opponents. Andrew made up for his 80m nightmare and absolutely hammered it home in both the heat and the final.

So the big moment arrived. The results. 'Campie 3rd'....said Mr McKenzie on the tannoy.....2nd place..........Law. My eardrums nearly burst at the squeals of delight behind me. Finally the shield was with Dunbar. We have not appeared on it for 29 years, but some folk think we did win it in 1980, which would be good as one of the mums of the girls would have been in that team. Hats off to Law for their long reign, and I suspect they will bounce back next year with a stronger squad. However the credit has to go to the kids who really did work hard and deservedly took back the shield.

Loch Leven Half Marathon

Photo: Happier times at Loch Leven. That bloke on my left beat me after my bobbins last 3 miles.

3 weeks have passed since the marathon and Rhona got in touch and persuaded me to do the Loch Leven half today. Having done very little running since the big one, I was relying on my marathon fitness to get by. I was hoping to crack 1:25 so I set off doing a 6:30 pace. It was going very well with me gaining over a minute for the main part of the run. But then the wheels fell off my plan at 10 miles. Here you do a right turn at the north end of the loch, straight into a head wind. I remembered this happening the last time I did it, but I had forgotten just how much it slowed me down. So, having run 10 miles at 6.5min mile pace, it then took 20 minutes 44 seconds to run the last 3. What a disappointment it was to see the clock tick past my PB time and give me 1:25.44 Grrr! Maybe it was too much too soon. I came 34th and 9th in my age category. I shouldn't grumble too much as it was great scenery and a well organised run. In our goody bags we were all given a buff. No matter how I wear a buff, I look like a total knob or like I am in the middle of a course of chemotherapy. Emma has already nicked it, and Andrew was pretending to rob banks with it.
Rhona won a prize of the 2nd fastest woman of a certain age, so we killed time eating free cakes. The woman complained that some runners were taking 3 or 4 cakes and that there wouldn't be any left for the slower runners. We were actually doing them a favour by eating more cakes we would slow down, and in doing so, prevent them from eating too many...which is why they are slower runners.

Tref's a big hit

Well Trefor is now a world wide t'interweb sensation. The film of him on a slide trying to eat a piece of ham had its 100,000 hit last night. And almost on a daily basis I have to filter out the abusive comments from animal lovers who think I am cruel. Most of them are Americans and many seem to be bonkers. YouTube have genuinely made me offers to pay me to advertise on the film as it is now a big hitter. I have so far declined. Anyway, have a look for yourself and it will either cheer you up or cause you to write inane abusive comments in text language.

Trefor on the slide