Unable to run myself at the moment, I’ve been living vicariously through your photos and brief reports. I can well imagine the frustrations, fumbles and swear words as you took selfies. I’m sure there must be an ideal technique to it. But it does leave us with a fine set of photos: plenty of open mouths, sweat, drench and lockdown locks. A chance to put names to faces of people we once-upon-a-time used to meet. And a chance to meet new members whose first club activity was decidely un-club-like.
The photos show the range of weather conditions from Willie Gibson running at the hottest time of day on the hottest day of the year, to Nicola D and Alex C running in monsoon rains at 5.30am, to fog, to thunderstorm. Also stories of dealing with dogs (no surprise) and deer (yes surprise). Perhaps Pete Cain was the earliest out at 5am in the fog. Looked like a fairly safe course from where I’m (excessively) sitting, but someone nearly ran into the trig point while focusing on their selfie and Rob Owen had a brambles-shambles when he persevered with incorrect route choice in spite of the pain.
A clear lesson seems to be the benefits of doing a recce first. The 2-week window gives plenty of time for this. Mark Hooper put in 3 efforts and Michelle ran it over and over until she got bored. So Lee Murphy’s approach to leave it as late as possible to avoid doing it twice probably won’t win him the championship, and the runner who fitted in the run around a cycle to Glasgow and back was probably doing some extra self-handicapping.
Quite a few folk did this as their first handicap and/or first ever run for Carnethy. The club will welcome you properly at some point. And a big thanks to Andy Lamont for taking on the complex job of handicapping. I know he’s been working very hard on setting your times for the next run.
I think we need a photo winner or two. I’ll go for Digby Maass in terms of looking fit, healthy and photogenic (and I am being serious here) and also to Lucas Lefevre for his edgy black-and-white effort which also identified a criminal on the run.
Next up, ‘Once Upon a Time in Holyrood’. It’ll be a tougher course but worth the effort. And having managed 93 runners for this handicap (a club record), let’s go for the century this time. It’s all about collective distanced effort.
Results
Kenneth Fordyce