Pentland Mile - Thurso - 08/09/07

A dry but blustery day greeted all 41 athletes who lined up at Thurso Harbour to take part in the annual Pentland Mile. The race over a distance of one mile is organised by Caithness Amateur Athletic Club and has for the last couple of years attracted a healthy number of athletes and an encouraging level of support from parents and on lookers.

Due to a strong head wind over the first half of the race when athletes were making there was along the beach front, there was a question over whether the course record set by Graeme Taylor last year would be broken this year. Graeme however did not disappoint and put in an excellent performance taking 7 seconds off the old record to record a winning time of 4.58min.

Some distance behind him but in a similar time to his personal best from last year was Craig Spargo in second place and in third was Alistair Black who took 10 seconds off his personal best. Of note was an excellent run by David Mitchell in 4th place, Hannah Patterson in 9th place, Shannon Eyers in 10th place and Chris Riddell in 11th place, all of whom surpassed the expectations of endurance coach Sophie Dunnett. These performances have all secured places for the athletes in the Caithness cross country teams for the North District Relay Championships which are being held in Inverness on the 13th October.

Despite the conditions a number of developing athletes broke their previous best times and they were Lauren Lafferty, Dean Britton, Tim Ridgley, Stuart Smith and Joanna Harper who took an astonishing 1.09min off her personal best set last year.

The full results are as follows:-

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