Lee Pen Hill Race Tribute Run 2021 report

Innerleithen's annual St Ronan's Games, is the oldest organised athletics meeting in Scotland instituted in 1827, but the 2021 edition was another casualty of COVID for a second year so Colin arranged some club runs on what would have been the Games Saturday in its place. The Games always feature Lee Pen Hill Race, a traditional up and back, short and steep race covering 3 miles and 1,200 feet of climb and then descent with some pretty rough off camber sections. Full details: https://moorfootrunners.blogspot.com/2021/07/innerleithen-lee-pen-club-handicap.html

It was a beautiful but scorching hot day, and the ice creams were well and truly earned! Many thanks to marshalls and timeskeepers, Fi, Alice and Austen Williams, and Dave, Edie and Lewis Gaffney.

At 9.15am a junior race of a total of 2.3km / 1.4 miles and 160m / 550ft elevation change up and then down, shown here: https://osmaps.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/route/9213876/Junior-Lee-Pen-course

A lot of juniors were saving themselves for the Tweedbank open graded track meeting on the Sunday so three juniors took on the challenge.

First home was Shaun Pyman 12:04, followed by Austen Williams 14:10 and then Ellie Darlow 14:41, a guest from Gala Harriers. Shaun then continued on to take his place in the silver band as part of an abbreviated Games day performance!

Seniors

For the seniors at 9am Dave Gaffney led a guided run up and down the whole route at as a social / recce run, followed straight after at 10.15 am, for those who fancied it doing it again at ‘race pace’.

In total 15 seniors were in involved with Tim Warner, Dorien Kimenai, Jen Misak and Amy Capper all did the social recce and then 10 did it as a race, with Dave Gaffney stopping to the top to collect the marshalls!

Senior times:

Runner	Time
Iain Veitch	27:23
Milan Misak	28:22
Colin Williams	30:41
Nigel Shekleton	31:21
Tim Darlow	34:26
Bob Johnson	36:21
Kevin Raftery	36:35
Brian Smith	39:26
Lorna McMillan	42:43
Vickie Morrison	43:12