18 miles 5,000 feet
Another long race and yet another near-identical time to the previous attempt - so I’m getting older but at least not any slower, or something like that. This was my second go at this new-ish long race in the Ochils and a fine race it is. The fact of it being an A-B means you need to get to Stirling Uni pretty early to get bussed over to Glendevon for the 12.00 start. However, that gives plenty of time for pre-race socialising, as opposed to the usual frantic registering and warm-up routines. And you get a nice wee bus ride along the foothills of the Ochils thrown in too.
We were politely dumped at the forest start a good 45 minutes before kick-off, but this was fine as the weather was fair and the midges non-existent. The only reason for any sort of warm-up prior to such a long race was the very important matter of getting one’s bowels and bladders emptied pre-race, and the woods were dotted with runners lightening their loads.
At the off we all meandered up in usual unhurried long race style, or in my case, my only type of early race pace, slow and steady. The forest track spread everyone out well before we hit the ridge up to Innerdownie, Whitewisp and Tarmangie. I settled down to a plod, watching my usual rivals disappear ahead, possibly never to reappear again, who knows at that stage. I just tried to run my own little race with myself for the first few hours before seeing if my body could manage to push on or hang on at the end.
This (my only) tactic worked quite well as I enjoyed some steady running and climbing for the first few hours out past Ben Cleuch and on to the twin peaks of Buck and Ever. On the trudge through the bog/swamp/tussocks over to Blairdenon I passed Brian Brennan, and closed in on Susannah MacMillan and Louise Burt, who had been a good few minutes ahead of me earlier. There is much talk of secret fast lines through this morass, but I tend to just aim straight over and take what mess I find myself in. In this case I followed the two ladies hoping they would find any waist deep bog before I would. It seemed to work OK.
The three of us summitted Blairdenon together, then I led them off straight down the fence line, ignoring the alternative longer, but possibly quicker, contour. A few falls later into ditches that were masquerading as runnable trods, I found the line down onto the tracks near the dam at Jerah, passing new Westies signing David Dickson. An energy jel, some jelly babies and some juice gave me the energy to push on up to Dumyat in the warming weather, eye-ing up Davy Duncan who was not too far ahead, and trying to stay ahead of Susannah had started to close right up behind me.
Gaining the top of Dumyat in 3 hrs 20 mins, was a welcome relief with the old familiar mid-week race route descent ahead. I tried to get my creaky knees and heavy legs to descend as fast as they could, and managed down in 21 minutes, making up a few places knowingly – and a few more unknowingly as Steffen Gorgas, Stuart Barrie and many others had veered off route on the descent, easily losing at least 5 mins. I placed 40th of 84 with my 3h 41m 15s.
It was the usual pleasant relief to flop down on the grass besides heaps of fellow Westies as our bodies started to realise what we had put them through in pursuit of our “hobby” or whatever. Some nice refreshments and prizes followed, as well as the usual post-mortems and general chit-chat. Thanks to Ochil Hillrunners and all their helpers for the race.
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