Alloa Half Marathon 2015

Gillian leads fantastic performances at Alloa

Gillian Johnstone entered the Alloa Half Marathon on Sunday March 15th, and lined up alongside a number of other Kilmarnock Harriers, and this was to be her debut over the 13.1 mile race distance after carefully building the miles up recently.

The pre race target was to beat 2 hours 17 minutes to become the fastest visually impaired female runner in the UK, and at the end of the race she smashed that goal with literally miles to spare.

Starting at 2 hour pace, the Kilmarnock Harrier gradually picked of the various pacemakers and in a kick to the line crossed the line in a remarkable time.

Finishing in 600th position out of 1001 runners, Gillian ran a remarkable 1.42.56 to make her the all time fastest female disabled Half Marathon runner in the UK and at 17 years and 6 months old, also the youngest. She is also the current No1 in the UK for 10k in disability & No2 in Scotland overall in her age group.

Equally happy as she gears gears up for her Marathon debut in London next month, was Natalie Wales. Originally planning on using the race as a training run, Natalie ran with her father-in-law and coach Kenny for most of the race, and she clocked a big personal best to set herself up perfectly for the double distance run in 6 weeks where she will also be hoping to give hubby James a run for his money on the day.

Fastest Harrier in the race and also securing a pb was Stuart Murdoch who has been in great for over cross country in the past few months. Stuart took a minute off of his 2013 time over the same course by running (an agonising) 3 seconds over 80 minutes in a fantastic run.

11 Harriers in total competed and when all was tallied up the times on the day were –

Stuart Murdoch 1.20.03, Gerry Dodds 1.36.32, Kenny Wales 1.39.18, Natalie Wales 1.42.33, Gillian Johnstone 1.42.56, Brian Darroch 1.50.30, Susan Beattie 1.51.50, Alex McGhee 1.52.45, Alan Anderson 1.52.55, Steven Milligan 1.52.56, Lesley Cotton 2.00.52.