Turnhouse Hill Race 28/07/10
I decided to run the Turnhouse Hill Race at the very last minute. It was a slower day at work than normal, and if I'm being honest I was still sulking a little after a poor performance from myself at Musselburgh. What better to knock this out the system than a hill race starting from my favourite training spot, Flotterstone?
It was a perfect night for the hills, short breeze and warm sunshine. I met up with Michael N and Tony S before the start, and I have to remark it was a pleasure to meet Tony properly and revel in his delight that more and more Portys are taking on hill races. Shery and Johnny then appeared close to gun time too, and Michael Geoghegan and all of a sudden there were six Porty vests swelling the small ranks.
This photo from 2008s raceIt's a short race, 5k with roughly 300m of ascent, but the first half of the route is a total lung-buster. Thoroughly enjoyable though, as the spectacle of accompanying cows racing alongside us before being on hands and knees crawling to the top took precedent. I lost a few places on the final part of the ascent, though wasn't too worried. Having trained out here quite a lot I knew I could make up serious ground on the downhills.
Burton's Biscuit Van - you can just see it in top photo.So it was to prove as I turned off the brain, engaged the feet, switched the view to 'down/ground' and picked off roughly half a dozen runners. 34min bang-on was my watch time, so pleased with that and copious amounts of fresh air. The best of the night was arguably still to come though - Johnny, Michael and I cheered in the others to make six brightly smiling faces, and a runner from Penicuik (Mike, if he is reading) was kind of enough to collar me and tell me how much he enjoyed occasionally logging on to our site to read our top reports (and particularly enjoyed the Lairig Ghru recently, which he had also run). My point, you may be wondering? Well, nights like this, we're obviously doing a great job of 'spreading the word'' - bright summer nights flinging ourselves down hill are just the pinnacle of it.
Report Phil Owens
Results here
Scottish Hill Racing route etc here
Race photo Mary, others pb (taken 22/05/10)
