This was the first running of the An Teallach Hill Race which was organised by Highland Hill Runners to help raise funds for the Dundonnell Mountain Rescue Team.
The race is quite a while away from Edinburgh but fortunately for us it coincided with the end of our holiday up near Durness, so we were able to stop by on our way home.
The forecast for the day wasn’t fantastic but as it turned out, the weather was actually pretty perfect! Fairly warm with low winds and only a bit of cloud brushing the very top of the hills. Vest weather for sure!
The route is a ‘there and back’ starting just up from the road by the Dundonnel Mountain Rescue Base and climbing to the summit of Bidean a’ Ghlas Thuill. The first/last section of the race is very steep and covers rough ground littered with rocks/tussocks and mud. There is a path leading up but it was more often than not easier to run off of it. Further up the hill the path become much better, running alongside a river up through a gully. Out of the gully the terrain becomes completely rocky with a steep climb up to the summit.
I hadn’t raced in a couple of weeks due to injury but I’d recovered enough to get back to training during the week of the race so I was feeling reasonably fit. Iain has been in fantastic form recently but I still has slight hopes of matching his pace on the run.
As soon as we set off, however, I realised that wasn’t going to happen as he shot off at a blistering pace making his own way up the mountain. A small bunch of us ran more or less together for the first section of the race up to the start of the gully and it was here we could see Iain, a good couple of minutes up ahead right on the heels of a Highland Hill Runner (David Wilby).
I was beginning to tire a bit here and dropped back from the group I was in, falling into 6th place.
As I began climbing the final section to the summit, David came flying down the mountain with Iain right behind him. I looked back a little while later and saw Iain had pulled ahead! It was a great feeling seeing Iain doing so well and that spurred me on to the summit. Fairly quickly on the descent Steven Fallon came racing past me and I had to put in a fair bit of effort to match his pace. He seemed to keep pulling away but I figured if I could keep him in sight I would probably be provided with a very good route back to the finish!
The descent was rough going but I manged to get down without any falls somehow. Not everyone was so lucky though, more that a few people were nursing cuts and grazes at the finish.
Iain had managed to pull away from David by exactly a minute and a half to win the race! Steven finished in 6th position and I was just a little bit back in 7th. Harry came in shortly after in 15th.
There was a lot of local beer/haggis offered up as prizes and we got even more by winning the team prize!
A very impressive win for Iain over new, difficult terrain. I’m going to have to work hard to catch him back up again!
Andrew Gilmore