A nice sunny evening saw about 15-odd runners toe the line for the first race of the 2014 Alt-C5. First off were Andrew and Rachel Nash on the junior route up and down Arthur himself, finishing in an impressive 21 and 26 minutes! Post-race Oreos were the recovery food of choice. Are there any juniors in the club who can challenge these two future stars?
After a brief briefing where I absolved myself of all responsibilities and recruited a road crossing marshall (a crocked James Waldie), we started the main race. Such was the collective confidence in my shortcut abilities (last Wednesday may have something to do with that), that virtually no-one followed my secret route to the first climb up the Dasses. Your loss folks, it was at least 5 seconds quicker.
Notable highlights from the race were seeing Andy take a route through chest-high nettles and brambles to Dunsapie enabling my overtake, Mark Hartree’s very impressive descent off the crags, hearing about Gordon’s 5 races in two days schedule (he leaves for holidays on Wednesday morning), and the reports that some runners down-climbed the crags west of Nether as part of their route!
Remember: you have until midnight Sunday to get all the events done and submit your times to Bob! Good luck!
Iain