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East Lothian 3 Peaks Duathlon
40km and lots of climbing!
8th May 2011
(Results are below the report)

Video of the race
Keith running his own event	Hilary on top of the world	Nigel raced his son up The Law	Ronnie with the beach far below	Andrew Lennie + bike with Olly catching him	The Mums may have powered the tandems but the kids beat them to the top.
The view is the reward!	Ben Lomond winner Paul Faulkner			Bob cycling down North Berwick Law	The winner winning - Colin (had Nick on the bike)

A train of Atlantic fronts were racing across East Lothian early morning, leaving the road in Gifford under a few inches of water as we drove to the Blinkbonny start. It was still rather wild as the early starters left in rain for a cloud covered Lammer Law. Not many minutes later we were sweltering in sunshine on the heathery upper slopes with steam rising off the bracken. The family tandems and triplets (five junior stokers in all) were early leaders on the road to Traprain (the floods had already subsided), pursued by the more severely handicapped, spurred on by the perceived injustices from the handicapper. Digby Maass got a red card for handicapper-abuse on Lammer Law and a two weeks ban from the handicapper’s future events. There’s still a steward’s inquiry in progress into whether he was victimised unduly, or just can’t ride a bike commensurate with his undoubted running ability (from which his handicap was calculated). Anyway he got the handicapper’s consolation prize to calm him down. Sorry Digby!

Andy Lennie was so carried away by the tail-wind down to Longyester (and his need to keep ahead of Bob Johnson for the Cyclo X prize) that he came off on the first bend and collected some impressive gravel rash before calming down a bit. Everyone else concentrated on the distant views of Traprain and North Berwick Law through the clear spring air with the intoxicating scent of pine, rape seed and gorse. Our World Champion orienteer Bill Gauld had a rare navigating slip and set off along the road to the south of Traprain, losing valuable time before realising his mistake as Traprain passed around his wrong shoulder.

Conditions were sweltering on the sharp scramble up Traprain, where copious nettle stings helped revive flagging legs. The end game starts at East Linton after crossing the Tyne and starting the climb to North Berwick. Here the field was compressing well for a busy scramble on North Berwick Law. Your handicapper suffered yet another humiliation from the Gibson/Stewart tandem GT machine as they stealthily snook up on him just as he was thinking he had avenged last year’s drubbing.

North Berwick Law was quite congested with the now-compressed field jostling for the finish. Bob Johnson caught Andy Lennie at the summit to secure his Cyclo X title once again. This is a small sample of many other personal battles that were enjoyed in superb weather snatched from the jaws of what could have been a very wet day.
Many thanks to Anne and Ian Nimmo, Andy Millard, Keith Adams, Peter Baxter, Bärbel Burns and other valuable helpers who supported our marshals for the event.
Thanks also to North Berwick Fry for their usual friendly hospitality and excellent food.
Results attached for further forensic analysis.

Keith Burns

East Lothian 3 Peaks Race*

“The law is a kind of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in yer face while it picks your pocket; and the glorious uncertainty of it is of mair use to the professors than the justice of it”.
Charles Macklin
Love a la Mode

“But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first”.
Matthew
Verse 30

“We must go UP to the Sea Again”.
Keith Burns

Maybe it was by having no pockets to pick or by simply following the example of my Elder, or because the hocus-pocus science of the handicapping left me with no glorious uncertainty Colin and I romped home to an erm, thinking of next year’s handicap an arduous, difficult, lucky and totally stretching overall win.
Bill made the same error I made last year and took the first right off the Traprain road which takes you straight to Traprain but on the wrong side of the hill. The most direct route to the summit from there is, as I recall, a slippery climb up Via MacNiven (VS 5a) which although is mostly up a narrow groove probably wouldn’t work for Bill’s tyre gauge although was probably not as v. severe as the ploughed field, beech hedge and field ditch / stream I negotiated last year.
Today was simply Carnethy from the questing to the querulous ~ as per above quotations ~ Andy S had a PB despite being feeling ill, maybe ill, just ill, with “nothing in my legs”. Andy L tried to put nothing in his legs by scraping bits off them off (along with his favourite shorts) in the first half mile. The age band seemed to range from 7 to 77 and we had road bikes, hybrids, trail bikes, tandems, trandems, and Trevor … courageously cycling just months after a cycling accident which put him into hospital with the sort of (luckily temporary) memory loss that in this sort of race makes you forget, erm stuff but not the beautiful Becky, cuddly Cali, huggable Hilary, lovely Lorna, etc. oh and the winsome Willie (?) and other fit and handsome lads and lasses which added to the diversity and discursiveness (for some) of the day.
A glorious cloud inversion over the Forth and most of Fife was largely unnoticed by those fiercely competing on the bikes, trikes, etc. but observed by most runners and me of course.
All in all, somewhat surprisingly for a 40km Duathlon a great family day out and whatever the form of transport used it remained love a la mode.
Thanks to Keith for the organisation and all those who marshalled / helped.
Nick Macdonald
* The Three Laws (more romantic, less engineered).

Results by finish order (results by fastest times are below)

Run

Bike

Cat

H'cap

Est time

Start

dep Blink

Run1

arr Trap

Bike 1

dep Trap

Run 2

arr NBL

Bike 2

finish

Run 3

Total time

finish rank

speed rank

Colin Elder

Nick Macdonald

Team

1.415

2:42:00

10:06:18