It’s been a tough ol’ year for racing. Most hill races have been canceled, all of them after March certainly. The world of road racing seems to be ticking-over with some Virtual Races being held instead, some with different formats but the theme seems to be “run the required distance anywhere within a given date timeframe, and then send us your results”. While it’s great to see something going ahead, for those of us where the course is part of the challenge and enjoyment of the run, it feels a little unfulfilling just to pound the streets until your GPS watch says stop. Or, maybe that’s just me! Thankfully there are a few races that define the course as part of the virtual race, still with the same timeframe and social distancing constraints, but at least it gives you a real taste of the race and a motivation to get out there and run the route – the Pentlands 7 Reservoirs race was one of these races.
The 7R course starts/finishes on Threipmuir Dam, and follows an anticlockwise route round 7 of the reservoirs in the Pentlands: along the north side of Threipmuir, up exponential hill and through Green Cleugh to Loganlea, down to Glencorse, up Phantom’s Cleugh to Bonaly reservoir, down to Torduff Dam, then along to Clubbiedean and finally the north bank of Harlaw back to Threipmuir. One notable rule deviation for the virtual 7R was that you didn’t need to start/finish at the traditional point on Threipmuir Dam, but you did need to include that short out-n-back on your run (*cough* Mark *cough*). I chose to start at the Bonaly car park, partly for convenience seeing as it’s the closest point from Edinburgh, but also because it moves the grinding tarmac-ey flat-ish sections to the start of the race when I still had enthusiasm and energy for it. You could call it “race strategy”. Get me! However, I quickly learned that other strategies such as “training” and “not drinking so much” would have had a much greater impact and I probably should’ve done that instead.
As races go, it was an interesting one. I tend not to run hard all that often, or have any natural instinct for pacing, so trying to gauge a “race pace” is difficult when there’s nobody around you to measure against. Also, during races all the fast lads ahead of me would have already startled the dogs, dog walkers, families, and bobble-hatted old people. So I spent the majority of the run trying to announce my approach, apologising to people, saying hello, giving horses space, being courteous through gates, all while generally trying to regulate my wildly oscillating pace. It was a testing time and certainly made me miss the focus of being part of a group of runners in a race. By the halfway point at Green Cleugh I was starting to suffer from blistered feet from using offroad shoes on tarmac, and by Phantom’s Cleugh I was suffering from “Radcliffe’s Bum” and dearly looking for some woods – I can’t really blame virtual racing for these though! All in all, after 1hr 44mins I was glad to get back to Bonaly and it was all over. Very glad to have done the race though, and enjoyed that post-race glow as I cycled home, it’s been a while since I’ve felt that. A good day!
Congratulations to Carnethy’s very own Rowan Boswood for winning the race outright, in an amazing time of 1hr 19min 28secs! It was tight at the top, with Ross Houston (Central) 10secs behind in 2nd place and Robbie Simpson (Shettleston) a further 15secs behind in 3rd. Andy Macrae won the MV50 category (10th overall) with a fantastic time of 1:27:33, and Gordon Cameron won the MV60 category (47th overall) in 1:51:03. Carnethy Men finished 2nd team behind HBT – I’m not sure of how many counted, so I’ll give a shoutout to Rowan (1st), Andy (10th), Drew Sharkey (11th), and Richie Umpleby (16th). Jennifer Misak was the best-placed Carnethy lady, finishing just outside the F40 podium in 4th (73rd overall). A strong Carnethy turnout of 31 finishers out of a field of 288, and some great performances too with Carnethy making up a third of the top 24 places. Well done to all that took part, and especially to the organisers for pulling this all together in such testing times! Oh, and a special shoutout to Donald Sandeman for hand-delivering many of the medals, including mine!
Jim