The first half of the race was great, I
was swapping places with Keith, Kenny and Craig from Teviotdale and all doing
fine in the slippery conditions. It was probably raining but I didn't
particularly notice. I could feel the strengthening wind at our backs going
along the ridge from Ben Each to the climb up to the summit of Stuc. On the
climb my legs felt pretty sluggish with the cold wind and sleet chilling the
muscles and the Hawick boys took off, only to be seen flying downhill as I
neared the top. A lack of feeling in my gloved hands told me it was pretty cold
and would be much worse when we turned back into the wind.
It was! I was so cold I could hardly run
but I knew I had to keep going or I'd freeze !The marshals around the
summit looked frozen too but managed to stay cheerful and were handing out
water to all who wanted. On the way back along the ridge the conditions were the
toughest I've run in in any hill race. Most of the other runners seemed very
cold too and only a few seemed unaffected. Alayne Finlay came skipping down a
tricky rocky section as if it was a grassy hillside in summer! I was glad and
relieved to reach the point where we turned down into Glen Ample.
This part of the route was really
slippery and most folk fall quite a lot. As someone overtaking me joked, it was
great fun, just like being drunk but without the hangover! I've always lost
places on the long descent into the Glen but this time I lost lots more on the
climb back up the other side and on the descent back to the forest. Because of
the cold I hadn't felt like drinking so hadn't had any of the juice from my
camelback and was short on energy. Realising this and tempting fate, I was
thinking that the combination of near-hypothermia and near-hypoglycaemia
isn't that bad, when the cramp set in! Oh dear, I wasn't having a good race at
all, at all.
Well, the last part along the forest
road was a dawdle and the soup at the finish was the most welcome ever. There
was obviously a bit of a drama going on in the organisers tent with four police
persons outside and some worried conversations involving summit marshals and
mountain rescue teams. It says a lot for the organisers that nearly everyone
completed the race and everyone got off the hill safely.
I finished 103rd in 3 hrs 21, almost half
an hour slower than my last attempt in 2009! Oh well. Results here:
Cheers. Russell
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