With the temperature rising above freezing on Friday for the first time in a week, the weather looked promising for parkruns in Glasgow this weekend. But social media early on Saturday morning told a different story as Pollok, Victoria and Springburn were all cancelled – victims of sheets of ice on the courses caused by light rain and a subsequent cold snap overnight.
Since Tollcross parkrun was the only Glasgow parkrun still going ahead, it was an inspired choice to make this the venue of a Bella Winter Championship race. Or maybe Bruce has a crystal ball he’s not told anyone about. There were changes to be made however, and even Tollcross had to make use of the alternative course, out and back 4 times on the grass.
Just making it to the start was the first challenge to overcome. Thick black ice on all the paths meant that anyone watching from the overlooking flats had an entertaining morning counting the number of runners using their posteriors rather than their feet to get down the hill.
With everyone upright again and safely on the grass, we were given a brief description of the revised course and we were off. The hills and grass combined to make this an even more challenging run than normal, and after a couple of laps, some of the turns were getting treacherous. Bad news for anyone who hates cross country. Graeme’s shouts of encouragement from the sidelines were very welcome and he gets a special mention for taking photos, probably suffering frostbitten fingers in the process.
First Bella home was 3rd place Tony McParland (19:54) but the day belonged to the Bella ladies who put in some great performances and gave us the first four females over the line:
- 1st Mary SENIOR (23:43)
- 2nd Helen CRAIG (24:54)
- 3rd Jane WILD (24:57)
- 4th Julie VINTER (25:00)
Well done to all 15 Bellas who ran. Results for the club can be found on the parkrun website here:
Bellahouston Road Runners – consolidated results – 24 Jan 2015
Full Tollcross parkrun results are here:
Tollcross parkrun – 24 Jan 2015
Consolidated parkrun results for Bellahouston Road Runners are linked from the: Bellahouston Road Runners parkrun results page, or directly on the parkrun website:
