Muirieston 6km Trail Race

On Saturday I ran the Murieston 6km trail race, organised by Corstorphine AC and held in Livingston.  I thought it'd make a nice change on a Saturday morning from Parkrun and I am really enjoying trail running nowadays.   I enjoyed this race too.  It was a small event - 54 people registered in advance, and 39 started the race.  Some people including me registered on the morning of the race so a lot of people that pre-registered obviously never turned up.  Of the 39 that started, I finished 11th.  I am pleased with that and I found the race quite comfortable.  In hindsight I should have ran faster.

The start - Livingston Cricket Club. 

Here are the results.  I finished in 25 minutes 34 seconds.  The second half of the race I moved up the field quite a lot and for the second time in living memory passed someone going uphill!  After the first 200m I don't think I was overtaken again.  I kept trying to catch the runner in front of me which seems like an obvious thing to do, but it's not something that I do often.  Runners that I thought were too far ahead and I would ever catch before the end, I surprisingly passed quite comfortably.  During the race as it was going so well, I made a target of trying to be the first unattached runner to finish as I assumed runners not wearing club vests were unattached.  I managed to achieve that goal so I was pleased.  I had a strong finish and overtook a girl from Corstorphine AC in the last 400 metres.  She must have tried to catch me again in a sprint finish because I see from the results that she was only 3 seconds behind me!

The finish - big turnout from Lothian Running Club (in light blue)

The race itself was fun and marshalled fantastically.  Every corner had a friendly marshall in a luminous vest pointing the way.  It was a mixture of tarmac, trail, woodland, and boardwalk.  We were warned  before the race about the boardwalk being very slippy and that turned out to be true.  There was a stair section of boardwalk which no one even attempted - everyone ran up the grass slope at the side.  Running downhill at one point I had to move out on to the grass to get some grip and avoid falling on my backside.  

Nice race and a good confidence booster for me.  I held my own against a lot of club runners.