SCOTTISH DISTANCE RUNNING HISTORY

Colin Youngson, above running in the E-G, has had a marvellous career as a road runner, but is at least equally important as a symbol of the golden age of road running in Scotland. For an overview of his entire career go to this link He has run in them all – Edinburgh to Glasgow Relay, Edinburgh to Glasgow and London to Brighton ultras, SAAA Marathon, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Moray, Aberdeen marathons . . . the list goes on. There is a new group of photographs dealing with his career at Graham MacIndoe’s Facebook page “Scottish Running in the 80’s and Beyond” which is well worth a visit.

One of the features of the big city and mass marathons of the 1980’s and early 90’s was the gantry at the finish which displayed the name and year of the race along with the time of the runner passing beneath. The photograph of every athlete in the race was available for a small fee to the athlete concerned. The certificates showed total neophytes running their first marathon on very little training showing genuine delight whether their time was at or over 6 hours or around three hours. A certificate on its own would not show how fresh the person was at the time. Some of the half marathons adopted the routine too and there was the occasional race – eg Ben Lomond when sponsored by Polaroid – that had similar arrangements. It would be remiss not to show some of these prized certificates/photographs here. You can see 30 of them here at this link . We hope to add more very soon.

The latest hill runner’s profile is that of Helene Diamantides, Scottish international hill runner, multi record holder for many events and one who has run all three ‘Rounds’ in the same year. This is a much more detailed coverage of this extraordinary runner and can be read here. As usual there are links to other pages at the foot of the page.

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