Another week and no Digby to chase around the hills. I guess he already qualified for his SHR mug and decided to give the 20 miles of slogging and 1700 m of climbing a miss.
After president Jim posted the mountain weather forecast on Facebook I was seriously considering skipping out as well. However, due to upcoming travel for work and missing the first short race in the series this was my last chance to get my mug. And since in previous years I have never managed to even come close I didn’t want to miss out. So I accepted a lift (thanks Jane Jackson) and headed off into the misty morning unsure of what would come. Pleasant conversation besides the usual chat about of weather and maps made the time in the car pass quickly. As we approached Stirling Uni it began to clear a bit and we could even see the Ochil Hills in the distance.
Gradually a number of familiar Carnethy faces began to gather. Huddled around maps listening to Stewart Whitlie’s last minute advice on route choice (something I should have listened closer to). Just before we started to walk towards the coaches waiting to take us to the start I noticed two rather dazed yet familiar looking faces. It was Matt and Mary Jones who had recently returned from holiday straight into a week of back to school and back to work and had clearly not recovered. I usually only see them at the start of the race and then at the end. On Saturday for the first 2/3 of the race we traded places back and forth which was a nice surprise. They passed me, then I passed them, then I stopped them from passing me by chatting about back to school and speculating if our kids were in the same class at school (I don’t think they are). Back and forth.
The other nice surprise was that most of this part of the race was cloud free. Unfortunately as we made our way off of Ben-Buck towards the second cut off the mist started to come down. Just in time for that lovely part of the race stumbling through the bogs. I heard people refer to them as peat hags. Not sure exactly what that is but they were unpleasant. Shortly after getting back onto a “real” track (on the way to Blair-something-or-other) my legs began to tire and as I ate my sandwich I watched the Jones run past me and move away into the mist. And then I was alone. Luckily (or unluckily much of hill navigation was done). A quick compass bearing, some fence following, the long decent into Menstrie and then up up up to Dumyat. I spotted the Jones’ far up the hill as I dragged myself up the final climb.
At the top someone said “Just follow this track, then that track, through the woods and the finish is at the Uni.” Right! The first three bits were ok but getting to the uni proved much harder for me. Seeing as we started at the other end and I have never been to the uni before and I didn’t know where the finish was, and, and, and… Suffice to say I should have listened closer to Stewart at the start. He said something about walls and gaps and trails, but after 5 hours my brain was not working very well.
In the end it took me about 20 minutes to get from the end of the trail to the finish. In an odd twist of fate captured on Strava the traily bit descent off Dumyat had caused the Jones’ to take a longer detour and we almost crossed paths at the point where I went wrong. If only I was 1 minute faster we could have been re-united and crossed the line together. Oh well. There’s always next year!
Carnethies had some great results on the day: Andy Fallas (1st overall and a new course record at 2:53:51 breaking the previous one by almost 9 minutes), Liam Braby (5th overall and 2nd U23), Stewart Whitlie (7th overall and 1st V50), Michael Reid (9th overall and 2nd V40) and Michelle Hetherington (3rd F50). Twelve other Carnethys ran too.
Full results here.
Sean Walker