Arran report

Updated: 2010-07-26
Lothian Ladies on top of the men

Two teams went over to Arran to run the relay. Unusually we had an all male plus an all female team. Unluckily (or luckily, as it turned out for them, sorry Doc) one of the men had to pull out due to injury, which left Jill the task of finding a replacement. Jill managed to find a man on the ferry over – more of him later…

The weather was overcast but warm, the scenery was still lovely and the hills were still bl@@dy hills (unless you were doing Leg 3 North) This year we managed to make each start on time…

The ladies team had some disadvantages – Edels legs were full of a cold, Jill and Mags had dodgy knees, Marie had run 24 miles on the Thursday, Teresa had a sore calf and I had just spent too many hours sunbathing…

During the race Teresa’s calf gave up and she had to walk 3 miles. We didn’t win the ladies race, but the team above us, which was a ladies team was only 2 minutes in front, so we were 4th ladies team. The next team behind us however, were nearly 20 minutes behind. We don’t usually like to gloat about teams who do obviously do not have as much ability as us – but in this case it is fully justified as they were our own men’s team……

Neil had a bad chest and he had to walk too – so he and Teresa cancelled each other out. So how about the ‘interloper’ – was he perhaps a ringer put into the men’s team by an unscrupulous Mrs Horsburgh? He had promised he would do his best not to let us down. In the end he nearly did – not by being rubbish, but by being slower than the winner of the leg by only 27 seconds – if he had won then he would have been presented at the end as being the men’s winner of that leg – and that may have caused a few embarrassing moments (and possibly disqualification!) So despite the men’s team having Mr superfast, they still didn’t manage to beat the disadvantaged ladies….

Proof of them being lightweight was shown the next morning, only the ladies managed to go for a run in the morning (where Jill & I managed to see seals and 2 sea otters)

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves – not least Edel, who let the children take the blame for being too noisy at 10.30pm – must have been the concoction of wine and lemsip…

Mags has now completed all the legs, Jill and I have bagsied our legs for next year – are the men up for a rematch?


Saran Jones