On the glorious evening of 21st July 2021, while some panted and sweated around the Braids Pandemicap, Neil Burnett and Mark Hartree completed the 2nd known round of the Pentland Waterline.
While not the hardest round, being a mere 18km, it needs a certain type of runner to succeed and should not be under-estimated. Details of the inaugural round and route are here (carnethy.com/running/pentland-swims/) at the bottom of the table. If you have been tempted to pay to do a swim-run, save yourself several hundred quid and head for the Pentlands. If you fancy something like the Frog Graham, there are plenty of great options closer to home.
I cannot lie, but Neil would smash my original time of 4hrs 1min if he hadn’t waited a lot on each leg for me hobbling and bobbing along. We completed together in 4hrs 39mins even if Neil might take an hour off that with the added buoyancy of his swim-run wetsuit and generally better swimming and running ability than me.
The route roughly follows the 7 Reservoirs half marathon route cutting a few corners to save 3km. The difference is swimming the length of 5 out of seven of the reservoirs with Thriepmuir and Glencorse effectively swimming half the length but enabling a logical run route to be followed. Overall, we did 5.1km swimming and 12.8km running or thereabouts. With the calm and hot weather, the water was warm and clear with temperatures ranging from 19c in Torduff to a balmy 23c in the blacker Clubiedean and Loganlea.
By the end we were equally swim tired. We dodged rubber dingies in Harlaw, battled swarms of clegs and flies around Thriepmuir, narrowly avoided the fisherman in Loganlea and inhaled campfire smoke across a flat Bonaly. A super night out.
Mark Hartree