Antonine Trail Run

Mike McGovern and I headed to Croy between Kilysth and Cumbernauld for the Antonine Trail Race. Without a shadow of a doubt Mike would have won it but the course was hard to follow with so many twists and turns and lost the lead about 3 times taking wrong turns. I stuggled a couple of times too.

There was a group of 5 of us leading for a large part of the race with me being the back marker and kept getting dropped and then coming back into contact when they slowed when someone went wrong. I got properly dropped at about mile 9 and then I could see Mike in second just behind first but then at the bottom of the last hill Mike went straight on and run for about 1/2 mile before turning so he came in 6th and I was 4th.

Nice course though if you didn't get lost. I took 1.36 for 13.75 hilly and muddy miles.

I've copied the below from the website:

156 runners toed the line for the 2nd running of Adventure Zone Scotland’s Antonine Trail Race on Sunday. The run starts in the village of Croy and loops through Croy Hill, into Kilsyth and across Drumbreck Marsh before two killer summits at Barr Hill and back up Croy Hill to finish.

It is 90% trail with only three small tarmac sections. The rest is pretty runnable tow path, forest trails and grass paths. However, where grass is involved there is mud, especially in Scotland, and after three days of incessant rain there were a few potentially shoe-stealing mud spots that thankfully didn’t claim any victims.

On the day the weather was cool and mainly dry with only a couple of notable squalls threatening to dishearten the participants stretched out around the course. This was a welcome relief as the talk before the race was of the potential underfoot conditions, with the overhead being of almost secondary importance.

Full results are here: adventurezonescotland.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/atc_2013.xls