Lothian Running Club
Cross Country Season 2024-2025
Lothian RC is a diverse community of runners, who take part in many different activities across the year from Ultra Marathons to track sprints and everything in between. The one activity that brings everyone together, old and young, fast and slow, at the same event is Cross Country. Where PBs don’t count, or even matter, only the position and more importantly the number of finishers do. Where the nervous banter in the tent is as crucial as any warm up, where a variety of sugary snacks replace hi-tech energy gels.

Quick recap on how the season works, it starts off in October with the Relays, East District and then Nationals, these are 2.5km for Juniors and 4km for Seniors. These are quickly followed by the National Short Course Champs. In November and December we have two of the three East District League Races, these include races for U11s to Masters, the third and final League meeting is in January. At the beginning of December we have the East District Championships, with the chance to be selected for the Inter Area Competition. Finally, at the end of February we have the National Cross Country Championships at Callendar Park, Falkirk. For those familiar with the this park you will know that the spectacular Roman Antonine Wall passes through the Park, many competitors, as they run up it, have questioned why did the Romans have to build it so big? At each of these events there are Team placings based on the finish positions of certain number runners from each club. So in an event where the first 4 runners from each club count, if we had runners placed 8th, 10th, 12th and 14th this would give us a Team score of 44 points. The team with the lowest points total would win and so on. The number of counters varies depending on the competition.

The beauty of Cross Country is that you do not need to pick the team beforehand, club members just run and the finish positions determine the counters. Even if you are not a counter the chances are you will have made a contribution to the team effort by coming in front of a counter from another team and forcing them to have a higher score. Also, the club pays for the Relay entries and all three East District League meetings.

This season we had a grand total of 77 different club members run cross country, possibly a club record. In the Team events the Senior Men’s Team impressed with a 3rd place in the East District League Race at Dundee, 5th in the East Championships at Stirling, 5th in the League Race at Bathgate and 14th at the National Championships. The Masters Women finished 12th overall in the East District league and the Senior Women were 18th at the National Championships. Of the whole of Scotland only 10 other Clubs had a top 20 Men’s Team and a top 20 Women’s Team at the National Champs!
In the Young Athletes we had competitive Teams, both boys and girls, at the two relay events with the boys gaining an impressive top 20 place at the National relays. At Bathgate in the final East District League Race we had impressive teams in the U11 Boys (7th), U11 Girls(6th), U13 Boys(8th) and U13 Girls (12th).

As a club we also have an unofficial points league, where you gain points in each race you finish, with your best 5 races to count. The points are calculated by dividing the Median (average) time in the race by your time and multiplying by 1000. Congratulations to the top three in the table this year this year:-
1st David Wright
2nd James Wright
3rd Mark Ritchie
All three have had excellent seasons. David clinched the top spot from long-time leader Mark with a great race at the Nationals. A bit like winning the Rugby World Cup where you will have to beat South Africa and New Zealand, to win this you need to beat cross country stalwarts Rachel, Colin and Danny who finished close behind.
The full points table is in the attached Files section.

So if you did not run Cross Country this season don’t have FOMO and we will see you in October at the relays or the East District League.