Harriers here and there, mid-May

This was another weekend with Harriers racing all over the place. 

Saturday’s events were the Ben Lomond junior hill race, where the Sweeney boys had another fine showing. Levi was first up for the fun run which really only had 1 other challenger. He ran the 1.6k course in 9.41 to win the fun run and he was delighted.

Sol was next in a 2.7k run. He led to the top and was overtaken by a Lothian boy on the way down to finish second. 

For Sol, this was the second in a series of three junior hill race championship races. We're not quite sure how the points work out over the whole series, but Kerry reckons that Sol has 40 points for 2 second places and is probably leading the championship at the moment. The final race of the series is at Menstrie on September 2.

The second of Saturday’s events was the Loch Leven Half Marathon. We had a big turnout at this race last year, but this year, only Allan and Graham made the trip to Kinross for the jaunt round the Loch. Allan finished in 1.47.09, comfortably inside his target time of 1.50, and Graham just missed the 2 hour mark, finishing in 2.01.35. Good marathon preparation for both the chaps.  

Sunday’s main event was the Ignis Women’s 10k race in Glasgow. This is a very popular race, with over 10,000 entrants this year. Five Harriers made the trip this year, with Maddy gunning for her Mum’s time in her first 10k. Angela was for first Harrier to finish in 41.49, in 43rd place overall, shortly followed by Kerry (slightly bizarrely listed in the results as Jeff Sweeney!), finishing with a pb in 42.44, in 58th position. (A 10k pb a fortnight after doing the Highland Fling is a pretty major achievement in my book.). Maddy didn’t quite beat Nicola’s best 10k time, but her 47.21 was very impressive.  

Kirsty has run this race many times before, but this year’s time was her best result, finishing in 54.54. Possibly the best news of the day, however, came with Jayne’s run – it’s not that long since the doctors were suggesting she might not be able to run at all, so to come back and do 57.49 was a terrific effort.

The final event of the weekend was my run in the Outdoor Capital Trail Half Marathon, at Nevis Range, near Fort William. I know, I should have known from the name it was going to be a bit dodgy. There now follows a bit of rant, so those of a nervous disposition should look away now, but if you want to know how not to organise an event, read on…

The thinking behind doing the event in the first place were a bit woolly. I like half marathons, and I fancied doing something a bit different, and this one seemed a decent off-road route with a fair amount of ascent and descent, without being too gruelling. In other words, it did have the potential to be quite good fun. However, even in the week leading up to it, the weather forecast was grim – wind and rain – so I was wondering about the benefits of doing it. Then I told myself to man up and get on with it, and if nothing else, treat it as a training run. So, it was up earlyish on Sunday morning and into the car and off into the steadily worsening weather. Getting blown about on the road across Rannoch Moor wasn’t exactly promising. As I was driving up, I decided I didn’t have the right gear, so I stopped in Fort William and bought myself an extra top, and as I was chatting to the woman in the shop, she said she thought the event was cancelled. Oh joy.

As I drove into the Nevis Range car park, sure enough, there were no signs of any kind of activity or event, and chatting to a couple of other would-be runners, we were on the verge of heading off when I had a look in the cafe, and sure enough, hidden away in a far corner, was a registration desk where numbers were being handed out. That was a start, but I was a bit  less than encouraged when someone asked about water stations, to be told that there were three, with the last one being about 8 miles from the finish – “you mean, 5 miles from the start?”. Cue considerable confusion over the marked map, which showed 26 somethings. Half miles, presumably. Who knows?

Warming up wasn’t really on the cards – the wind and rain made any excursion outside unpleasant, and I figured the first mile or so of the race would be a gentle roll downhill to get me going. As it happened, that was the case, sort-of, but it shouldn’t have been. Apparently we were supposed to take a left-hand fork at some point down the road, but if there was a sign, it was carefully hidden, and if there was a marshal, he or she was being careful to avoid drawing attention to themself. So I followed the people in front, in the mistaken assumption they knew were they going. We got a fair way to Fort William before we were turned around by a friendly van driver, who said he’d seen all the other runners taking the turnoff for the North Face car park at Torlundy. We turned round and made our way back to Torlundy, grumbling as we went. Sure enough, when we got to the car park, there was a water station, and we were back on track.

There were no mile markers, so we had no idea how much of the course we’d run. If there was a upside to our misnavigation it was that there were now more people to chase down and overtake. This was quite good fun. At one stage, one of the runners we passed did ask “where did all you fast guys come from?”. The route at this stage was good fun. It was a mix of narrow forest paths and wider Forestry Commission tracks, and it was all in the woods, so was quite sheltered from the wind.

Eventually I got to the finish, after a close encounter with a mountain biker on a narrow track (Nevis Range being a bit of an MTB hotspot), and an unnecessarily fiddly finish on a forest path. Emerging blinking into the daylight at the car park, I looked in vain for anything that looked like a Finish. There was one marshal who seemed to be trying to avoid eye contact but did eventually point me vaguely in the right direction. I didn't really know what was going on until a woman poked her head out of the door of the cafe and shouted at me to come inside. I'll admit I had a bit of an undignified rant, but was really disappointed in the organisation of the event.

In fact, I was so cross I just went straight back to the car, dried myself off, pulled on some dry clothes and went home. If I’d stayed, I’d have found I was actually 8th overall, and 1st Senior Vet, despite having run too far. Hey ho.

The drive back was interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much water coming off the Glen Coe hills, and the sight of two high-sided vehicles wrecked at the side of the road over Rannoch Moor kept me on my toes.

In retrospect, it was quite a good run, if I just think of it as a training run, but I don’t think I’ll be giving NoFussEvents a second chance.