Published: Thursday, 18th September, 2008 8:55am

Carnegie Harrier keeps on running into the record books

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MOST folk can"t contemplate running one marathon, let alone five.

But that"s exactly what Carnegie Harrier runner Pauline Walker did – IN ONE DAY – at the weekend"s Perth festival of ultra running.

Already the holder of two Scottish records for 24-hour running, Pauline rewrote the record books in the Scottish 24-hour Road Race Championships by covering the huge distance of 130.345 miles to win the gold medal, placing first lady and second overall in the championships.

Rosyth-based Pauline set her previous best in September 2006 when she covered 128 miles finishing fifth lady in the European 24-hour championships in Verona, Italy.

On her way to her new record 130.345 miles – one short of running five back to back marathons in one day – Pauline also set Scottish records for 100 miles and 200kms.

Behind Pauline, fellow Harriers Lynne Kuz and Pauline"s sister, Fiona Rennie, helped achieve one of the finest results in Carnegie"s club history as they finished second and third in the same championship.

Making her debut at 24-hour racing, Kuz put in a simply stunning performance, covering an amazing 125.313 miles to finish second lady and fourth overall.

Kuz, who recently placed second lady at the 95-mile West Highland Way, covered almost 85 laps of the 2.38kms circuit in North Inch in Perth, winning the Scottish Championship silver medal for her phenomenal run.

Rennie was also making her 24-hour racing debut and she covered a distance of 116.476 miles – five miles further than running from Dunfermline to Aviemore – to finish third lady (sixth overall) and win a championship bronze medal.

Afterwards, Walker admitted she was delighted to have smashed the 130-mile barrier.

'When I found out afterwards how far I"d gone, I thought, "My goodness, is that me?"' she told Press Sport.

'I planned my year around this race and trained very hard. To achieve what I was hoping to do – I am still stunned. Having three records now, I"ve blown myself out of the water and I think I"d better retire as I will never beat that. At the end I was almost overwhelmed with what I had achieved. I knew earlier in the race that I had enough time left to get the record and then do a little bit more so I really pushed myself on.

'I was probably doing 10-minute miles but I felt like I was Roger Bannister!

'There were a lot of Harriers there because of the relay race also taking place that night and every time you went by there was a word of encouragement that really kept your head up and my support crew were absolutely brilliant.'

The Harriers trio have now achieved the Commonwealth guideline qualifying standard for the inaugural Commonwealth Ultra Championships, which will be held in Keswick in 12 months. If that event goes well, it could become a medal event at the Commonwealth Games at Glasgow 2014. To cap a brilliant weekend for the Harriers, Gail Murdoch won a gold medal at Saturday"s Scottish 100km championships, also held at the North Inch. Murdoch, who was making her debut at the distance, covered the 62.2 mile course in a new club record 9 hours, 3 minutes and 59 seconds to place first lady and fifth overall.

Starting at 12pm on the first of 42 laps of the 2.38km circuit, Murdoch showed immense strength throughout the event, reaching the 50kms mark in 4:04.40. But over the final few laps a close contest developed with eventual runner-up Elaine Calder (9:07.40) closing the gap to just 25 seconds with two laps remaining. Murdoch dug deep, however, and produced a couple of her fastest laps to pull clear and secure a superb victory.

The Harriers also won the 12-hour mixed relay team race, held between 8pm Saturday evening and 8am on Sunday morning at the Perth festival.

The club"s team of Fabienne Thompson, Andy Durham, Steven King, Tommy Lawrence, Lewis Lawson and Peter Humphreys completed 113.227 miles (181.554kms) through the night, covering 76 laps of the 2.38km circuit.