Two Breweries Hill Race - Colin's report

The Two Breweries is a favourite of mine in a love-hate type of way. What's not to like:

1. It starts and finishes at the breweries of some of my favourite ales, and you get to have a few beers at the end courtesy of Broughton Ales.
2. It starts close enough for me to walk to the start (or jog if you are running late, which I was. Again!)
3. It traverses through some really stunning landscape
4. It is blimin' tough and a proper hill race - 19 miles long and over 5,000 feet of climb and descents in 4 distinct areas with sections of seriously rough and soggy moor. The sort of race that you start wondering how long you can keep it going far too early and feeling pretty broken by the time you finally get there.

All smiles at the start - not sure how long they lasted

113 started the 2017 edition and 100 completed including 3 Moorfoots Andy Cox, Alan Elder and me. I have done the race 8 times now and everytime I always end up in survival mode of merely trying to get over the last hill Trahenna with the sole objective of minimising the amount of cramp and Andy and Alan were no different. In fact Andy was having a great run on the back of his good form from the summer however a wrong turn at Stobo farm and lack of long runs led to a horrible last leg from Trahenna - I was being dropped too by those around me but comparing our relative splits from the last top shows I made up 5 mins in this final 20 minute leg so it clearly wasn't going well! Despite this Andy was first Moorfoot in 3:34:33 about 10 mins down on his PB. I feel like I took the perfect lines this year and seemed to catch up on those around me who were moving quicker especially on Hundleshope Heights where we were running in pretty thick cloud on top, and up Trahenna. I was rewarded by my second fastest time 3:36:56 - 1.5 mins down on my PB from 2010 so I am happy with that as my training has been focused on half marathon distances this year. Alan clocked 4:37:19 not far off his best but he was badly hampered with an ill fitting pair of new trainers which gave him serious grief in the latter part of the race otherwise a PB was on the cards. The race was won in 2:59:22 by Kenny Richmond of Shettleston - the slowest winning time in 12 years and probably a reflection of the challenging navigation and heavy ground - it rained at one point on every day in the fortnight leading up to race.
Race details: http://www.twobreweries.org.uk/
Full results here:
http://www.scottishhillracing.co.uk/RaceResults.aspx?RaceID=RA-0103&RaceYear=2017