Dumyat Hill Race 5/05/10
I took the day off work to ensure I made my planned hill race this week, which might seem a bit obsessive but I have holidays I need to use up and I want to do at least 4 of the 'Bog and Burn' series so need to make sure I start getting along to them given this was the third. Last year's Dumyat report had also whet the appetite nicely, although the 2009 event seemed to be heavily influenced by wet weather. The forecast this year was for rain too, but it was sunny most of the day. I went out for a gentle bike ride round Arthur's Seat, the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links in the morning which might not have been the best idea but it was hot and sunny and I was free from any responsibilities for the day so would have been daft not to. Also thought it might loosen my legs up a bit after Saturday's E2NB, but can't say it did especially. Still, no real harm done.
My brother-in-law, Donald, likes the occasional hill race too and we'd talked about trying to hook up to do some of these races. Got his call early afternoon to confirm he was also going to be able to make it and we were on.
That meant that instead of driving straight to Stirling I drove through to Bellsquarry (near Livingston) to hook up with him and he then drove us through to Stirling. Was great getting out to the countryside on a nice spring evening, and I was quite excited as we neared the race start at Stirling University. OK, excited might be over-egging it a bit, but (a) I was actually going to make it to a midweek race (b) I'm a bit petrified of hill races because I've only done a couple, and (c) I have lots of good memories of Stirling Uni because my brother studied there while I was at Edinburgh and we had some cracking nights out, including a couple of especially memorable long summer evenings spent lochside with a 'few' drinks. It has to be the most scenic setting of any UK university. So it was 'exciting' to visit again.
After registering and all that (£3.50 each... nothing left to say about race prices that PB hasn't already said in recent weeks!) we headed down to the race start. Met up with Tony and Sarah and got a bit of club camaraderie. Meant I wasn't the only Porty, which is always a good thing. There were lots of people taking part for a mid-week hill race and when the siren went the pack tore up the tarmac road to the edge of the campus. I'd started near the back, but it was easy for me to overtake people on this stretch. Obviously there was some nervousness around what lay ahead, but my general philosophy is to make ground when you can, especially when there are likely to be bottlenecks.
First and biggest bottleneck is when all the runners have to squeeze through a doorway in a wall to leave the campus and head in to the forest. And while in the forest it's almost all one long bottleneck given it's a narrow trail and pretty steep too. I tend to be pretty poor at ascending, and even worse at descending to be honest, but I was pleased to find I was mostly going past people on the way up - when I got the chance as some of it was single-file walking only, and some of it was open enough but just walking only because it was steep. Recent hill training must be helping.
Sarah - running unattached these days but wearing a nice vest.I had left Donald and Tony behind fairly early on, and I was able to keep Sarah in view most of the way up although she pulled away more on the final stretch of the hill as I got increasingly tired and her greater youth and fitness told... Not much longer saw her coming back down and tried to shout encouragement between puffs... The overall climb was longer than I expected, but soon enough we were going round the cairn at the top and starting to pick our way down. Plenty of people still coming up the hill, so needed to be careful to watch who was in the way and which way they were headed. I noticed Donald coming up after I'd been coming down for a minute or two, but must have missed Tony.
As I already mentioned, I'm not great on the way down. Tony (and others) assure me this will improve with practice as my confidence grows. (At least until I get over-confident, have a bad fall, and then need to build it back up again.) Where it's less steep, or undulating, I can let fly and go for it. Like everyone I expect, those bits are pretty exhilirating. But when it's steep and loose I tiptoe down uncertainly like a big pansy while people I overtook on the way up thinking 'ha! take that' now fly back down past me like mountain goats. Presumably thinking 'ha! take that'. I'm pleased to say there was only one bit where I actually had to stop, say 'Aw crap' and try and work out what step to take next. But this was as much about making a bad decision on the trail and ending up on a bit of a dead end path with several feet of drop to jump down to rejoin the main path. Anyway, after the initial flurry of people overtaking me, I got into my stride more on the middle section, and through the forest I did not too bad either except for one of the 2 particularly steep bits. On the final section, no-one came past me and despite tired legs I grabbed a couple more places as we hit the more familiar tarmac and my endurance from current marathon training came in handy.
Haven't seen results yet, but think I finished in about 52 minutes. Sarah had been back for a few minutes already when I finished, Donald followed about 4 minutes after me, and Tony a couple of minutes after that. An appropriate number of well dones and race stories were exchanged before we de-camped and headed in our separate directions. For me, this was back to Bellsquarry for leek & potato soup and a bacon & egg roll. Eggs freshly laid that day by my brother-and-sister-in-law's chickens. Nice.
A great way to spend an evening, and as PB said last year, one of very few things it might be worth missing club training for!
Report Sandy Macdonald
Photos Sandy and Chris Upson
Results here
Chris Upson's photos here
