Maddy Moss Mash Hill Race

18 JULY 2007
My 11th go at this great race and as enjoyable as ever before. A lovely evening and just over a hundred runners, including a great turnout of Westies. Manny had a great race to finish in 3rd place behind Dan Gay of HBT and Kenny Richmond of Bella. Way behind him there was a great tussle between myself, Simon, Steffen and Tom. This is one of my favourite races, combining a great slog of a powerwalk uphill that gets almost all the climbing out the way early on, a runnable cross country type section up top, and polished off by a cracking not-too-steep descent on a narrow trod. Steffen and I tracked Simon and Tom all the way to just before the Ben Cleuch summit, when we passed Simon and Steffen passed me to chase down Tom. I couldn't quite keep up with them, but still felt pretty strong on the descent. I was chuffed to finish about 4 minutes quicker than last year. We were treated afterwards to some good grub and prizes in The Woolpack pub. Thanks to Ochil Hillrunners for a great race.

From Race Organiser John MacEwan:

"At the start of the 2007 Maddy Moss Mash we had just over one hundred runners lined up and ready for the delights of The Law and the Gannel Burn descent, 104 to be exact. We had thought last year we might reach the one hundred mark but possibly due to the extremely hot and dry conditions we were down on previous entries. Numbers could have been even higher this year as we had a few late arrivals - some due to traffic and others to not checking what time the race actually started!

The race was won by Dan Gay (HBT) in a time of 52:41, a good few minutes' improvement on his 2006 time. First female was Elke Schmidt (Bellahoustoun) with 56:39. Elke also contributed to Bellahouston's picking up the team prize.

The weather didn't treat us too badly and any threatened showers left the race well alone. A little bit of clag up top was reported back to Race HQ by course marshalls but all runners made it round the course without this troubling them.

As is usual for the final descent in Maddy Moss no two people seemed to take the same line down through the bracken and gorse to the finish line, and as is also usual we had a few coming in behind the marshalls!

For prizegiving this year we were offered the use of an upstairs room in the Woolpack Inn who also provided some food. This arrangement seemed to work well and we look forward to a similar arrangement next year - without the beetroot however!

Thanks to all who raced, all those that helped out with marshalling, registration etc., Ronnie and Gina at the Woolpack and Heather Ales Ltd. who provided most of the prizes."

Results
Westies reports
Race route