• Extended to the 31st Dec •
Carnethy has certainly put on some superb virtual club races this year, but having just finished the 12 Hills of Xmas, I think these are arguably the best races yet. The series is very different and hard to compare with the other virtual club races I’ve enjoyed this year, i.e. the 6 Handicap races; the 6 Alt C5 races and the Skyline & Circuit of Glencorse – that’s 26 Carnethy club races in total and, very sadly, I’ve now done all 26 of them (!) after becoming the second person to complete the 12 Hills of Xmas (after Hilary). Unfortunately very few other people have so far recorded times for the 12 Hills so I hope to encourage you to go out and try some of the routes. What’s good about them ? Well, they’re short, so you can treat them as hard hill training efforts of about 20 mins or less and you can do a few in one run; they’re uphill, so no slipping and falling on the currently treacherous muddy descents since you can take it easy downhill, and as no hammering your legs on the descents, they are ready for the next uphill effort (you hope!); Also, they’ll all different: each climb has it’s own peculiarities.
I preferred the runs where the hills have a flatter start to get a warm up before the climb, such as Black Hill, Bell’s Hill, Carnethy, Castlelaw & Hare Hill. The northern three of Capelaw, Allermuir and Caerketton were tougher as they’re all straight uphill. Of all of them, Black Hill was probably my favourite (it’s not often anyone says that!) as it starts from Bavelaw Castle and so the first km was very fast down Green Cleugh, a great warm up before you hit the hill and the hill itself felt surprisingly runnable as normally you do it in the middle of a long run (or Skyline). Doing it as a short effort, you realise it isn’t that steep and has a decent trod all the way. The toughest (for us, will be easy for others) was surprisingly the one with the least climb, Font Stone to Spittal Hill. But that was because we did it the day after the famous thundersnow storm and the tops were covered in deep soft snow – it was pure hard work and a struggle to run, but a glorious blue sky, white hills day made it beautiful. Ignoring snow, the real toughest one is easily the Borestane to West Kip. It’s a long way to the start at the Borestane (we ran from Red Moss) and then crossing trackless Kitchen Moss with deep tussocks and deep ditches is not easy – made worse for us as the cloud was right down and we could only see a few feet all the way. So more reasons to do the 12 Hills are that every hill is different and you will explore some more unusual routes both on the actual race and joining them up into for longer runs. Anyway, if I can do it on 60+ year old legs, I’m sure you can, so give it a go!
Andy Spenceley