weekend round-up: gibside 10k and norman woodcock relays

Following her Italian adventure, another excellent run by Catriona Macdonald saw her pick up the women’s prize over the hilly seven-mile course at the Gibside Fruit Bowl, held within the National Trust Gibside Estate, in a time of 49:43 and 11th place overall.
 
Remarkably, this win came less than 24 hours after Cat was 20th overall in the Lindsays Scottish Short Course Championships held at Lanark. Having finished 35th last year, this was quite an improvement against the best of Scotland, including a mix of fast U/20s and 800 metre runners due to the odd 4k distance, in effect a course over football pitches, with not a hill in sight.
 
(Alistair Macdonald was 13th in his O/60 age category, although 30 odd seconds would have got him inside top ten and Anthony Jannetta 38th in his O/40 age category, in what he describes as ‘a manic race with a huge field!’).
 
Lee Bennett also had an outstanding run to finish as first Over 50 in 49:01 and 8th place, with daughter Robyn also running well for 6th Senior Woman and 34th, and  Linzi Quinn 57th and 9th Senior. 
 
The race was won by U/23 Houghton Harrier Chris Coulson in 42:47, with some 212 finishers.
 
Also on Sunday morning at Gosforth Park, some 102 teams were out at the Norman Woodcock Relays on a 1.66 mile course round the road that runs inside the race track.
 
A mixed relay for teams of three, Morpeth fielded some five teams with success in two of the veteran categories on offer.
 
Won by Sunderland Harriers in a cumulative time of 25:24, for whom Joe Armstrong ran the day’s second fastest leg of 7:42, Birtley’s Adrian Bailes going some four seconds faster, Morpeth’s A team of Mark Banks (8:06), Lizzie Rank (9:52) and veteran Tony Lewis (9:22) finished in a respectable 7th place in 27:20.
 
The B team were hit by the late withdrawal on Saturday that had meant Tony joining the A team, so it was down to team manager Scaife to complete the team after runs by Andriy Volkov (9:55) and Poppy Bluck (10:30), with the team finishing in 58th in 33:44. (Commented Scaife later, ‘I had a bit of a Star Trek moment as I kept recalling Scotty’s immortal words: Captain, I cannae get no more out of these engines!’  )
 
The Over 40s team of James Dixon (8:46), Kirsty Burville (10:20) and John Butters (9:39) were unfortunate to miss out in their category, coming back in 19th (28:45) but 4th  0/40 outfit behind three teams from North Shields Polytechnic Harriers, for whom Steph Maclean-Dann ran the fastest female time of the day (9:43).
 
However, the club’s 0/50s and 0/60s both picked up prizes, the 0/50s team of Neil MacAnany (9:49), Shuna Rank (11:42) and Mike Winter (10:48) finishing 2nd in their category in 32:16 and the 0/60s, represented by Dave Nicholson (10:43), Pam Woodcock (14:18) and Gavin Bayne (10:25), going won better to win theirs in 35:26.
 
Full results here.