The team:
Leg 1 – Bruce Smith
Leg 2 – Roddy McRae, Mark Hartree
Leg 3 – Andrew Patience, Olly Stephenson
Leg 4 – Billy Elliot
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V50 b – leg 1 report – Bruce Smith:
As a veteran (pun very much intended) of the Devil’s Burdens one of the things you can rely on is that no team planning will go perfectly smoothly. Once you move up the age categories life often intervenes as does infirmity, however, remarkably the original team line up that Eóin advised was the one that made it to the start lines in Falkland.
Despite the myriad changes to the route over the year, one constant has been the start in Falkland, in recent years it’s been a fast flat affair through the woods, but this year it was back to being a proper hill race. Up and over East Lomond and – new for 2020 – back to the same place you started (repeated for the rest of the legs too).
For some reason I was allocated the first leg- I’d done the old leg 4 a few times, which was roughly the same start but with a quick crash back through the trees back to the town centre. The last time I’d done the mass start of leg one was back in the 2000’s (I think with Andy Spenceley) when it went over East Lomond and ran through to the Holl reservoir. This time my main target was to try and keep us within hunting distance of the other V50 teams, which included Neil McLure on our V50 all stars, and, more likely, not to get us disqualified. Well, until we left the tarmac and hit the Maspie Glen climb I was even ahead of Neil. This was short lived and Neil (and several many others) soon flew past and I was left with the long grind up to CP1. From there it was the familiar run along the ridge to the top of East Lomond where it was a bit grim to be honest. Once clipped at the top the drizzly conditions made for a slip-slide drop down to the checkpoint by the gate (where a very nice marshal was waiting to punch the card). By the time we’d reached checkpoint in the car-park I was hoping for a nice fast run in to home. Sadly the drizzle was cold and in my face all the way back along the ridge, we were pretty well spaced out by this time, although I did manage to reel in another Carnethy runner… it wasn’t Neil. He was long gone. Through the last checkpoint and flat out down the great descent in Maspie glen. Only one more place grabbed here, and I managed to outsprint somebody on the road coming back to the field, before I careered down the exit lane for the leg 2 runners – not realising I had to do a lap of the park after I got the right side of the tape again.
Tagged Mark and Roddy and let them off the leash nicely down the pack (to help their navigation obviously).
Thanks to the rest of the team and those who organise the race.
In a way putting the race in a single location makes things much simpler but the new routes could do with a bit more climb on the other legs, it would have been good to see leg 3 go round and back over West Lomond so they could climb the eponymous Devils Burdens again.
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V50 b – leg 2 report – Mark Hartree:
After a pretty hectic week with family and care homes, a run was needed. The Burdens is always one of my favourites for the social and the best ever soups. I was very happy with my pairing with Roddy McRae who I hadn’t seen for a while, so a great chance to catch up. Also, Captain Olly-tastic and Bruce seemed have a hatched plan so cunning that we we bound to win a prize, including an avalanche probe. Be prepared… good idea. Andrew P and Billy (whizz) E made up our V50 team.
Having only briefly looked at the new Leg 2, I concluded after about 1 hr of solid uphill running to the top of West Lomond, that Roddy was annoyingly effortlessly faster than me. I nipped him for a bit on the rough descent, to be spanked on the track home.
We watched others come and go, talked to loads of folk but by the time Billy left for L4 the cold had seeped in and soup beckoned.
My favourite soup – maybe the beetroot and tomato, or was it the courgette and spinach, maybe the pea and mint, or my final sip of the carrot and coriander…
Great work Eóin and Anne Sophie for sorting and organising everything and to my team and the organisers for a great head clearer.
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V50 b – leg 3 report – Olly Stephenson:
The competition for Leg 3 began in earnest a week or so before the Burdens, with Andrew Patience and I emailing the team attempting to come up with the best excuses for which of us would be the slowest. I kind of lost track of his excuses to be perfectly honest, as, well, I was always destined to win that bit.
On paper we seemed like a reasonable pairing, similar ages, similar backgrounds, neither of us having raced (and in my case no running either) for 2 years, but with a pretty sizable elephant in the room – specifically I knew he was a running pal of Adam Ward’s, a veritable Carnethy Legend – and therefore he was definitely going to win the running bit.
We took over from Roddy and Mark, who put in a great Leg 2 performance, arriving at half flying and half running speed, at which point Andrew sprinted off uphill with the intensity of a sports car. Meanwhile I was left gasping and trailing in his wake, like a Mini Metro stuck in first gear.
Thankfully all of my suffer-training of the last year or so kicked straight in, and I felt pretty comfortable with lungs at 20% of what I wanted them to be, failing vision, maxed-out heartbeat, nausea from the single jelly baby I’d eaten an hour before, and legs operating at a Zimmer-frame shuffle.
The ‘Patience’ bit of Andrew’s name was tested early, both by my complete absence of speed, and shortly thereafter when a couple of my “I’ve reccie’d this bit, I know the way” shortcuts turned out to be less than ideal, with competitors clearly gliding past on the nice trail we’d just left for our muddy little trod. Thankfully he lives up to his surname, and was nothing but gracious throughout.
He shepherded me up Maspie Den, along the tops in head-freezing wind and rain, down to the cube-rock checkpoint beneath West Lomond, and then back home the same way, all the while gasping and flailing in his wake like a geriatric at an Ibiza rave.
In normal times there would have been a small part of me wondering why I was doing this, why I was suffering quite so much, why I hadn’t done more training. But not now, not today. It felt utterly amazing just to be here, body gliding across the landscape (as best as it could, haha), senses buzzing in the elements. I have rarely felt more grateful, more present, or more alive.
Exactly one year ago I was commencing a 2 week stay in hospital on an isolation ward, facing cancer, chemo, c-diff, a couple of chest drains and 40C fevers all at once. From my bed I could just about make out the summit of Allermuir if I craned my neck. It felt like I’d lost pretty much everything, and care free days of hill running seemed as distant as the moon.
And yet to my absolute astonishment and delight, here I am just 12 months later enjoying one of the sports I most love, in a magical landscape, at a great race, laughing and joking with a wonderful bunch of people. How very lucky I am to be able to do all of this again, at whatever speed I can muster.
Sincerest thanks to Andrew, my MV50 B team mates, the Carnethy Captains, and of course Frank McLaren and his Fife AC volunteers for an absolutely stellar day out, you have no idea how special Leg 3 of the Devil’s Burdens was for me this year.
And for those of you worried about your running speed, who cares, I can say with some authority it’s a great deal better than the alternatives.
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V50 b – leg 4 report – Billy Elliot:
No report submitted, but he took over from the Leg 3 runners with a smile on his face. And more importantly he made a full-size Claymore ‘trophy’ for the club a couple of years ago, which is now the Female First Team prize in the Carnethy 5, so Billy is up there with Adam Ward as a Carnethy Legend in my eyes.
Ollie Sephenson