Cairn William

A year ago I came out of racing retirement and my first race was Cairn William at Monymusk ....... a rude awakening indeed ,....anyway decided I would go up again and see how things compared a year on.

For those of you who haven't done this race before I'll give a brief description. starts and finishes in the centre of Monymusk which is about 15 miles or so from Aberdeen on Don-side ....race is a mixture of road, forest track, and hill path ......about a third each .....only 1400' of climb in 6 miles ...and with all that road and forest trail it is way too fast for an old git like me.

A lovely day for a race ....sunny with almost no wind ...pity as my preference is for horizontal rain and sleet and dodgy underfoot. My main memory from last year was just pain ....first pain on the road, then on the trail, then on the path , followed by more pian in each category as the race progressed with some special extra pain in the last section to the finish.

This year however I knew that the 20+ races I'd done since last year would change all that ....so the race started ....and what can I say ....my memory is of pain ....first pain on the road, then etc etc ........with some good news when I found that I was almost 5 minutes faster than last year.

Excellent sandwiches, biscuits and juice served outdoors at the end before the prize-giving and loads of prizes dished out .....results not yet published but the race was won in just over 48 minutes and I was just over 62 minutes .... a race I can thoroughly recommend particularly if you have any speed on the road/trail

Posted by Brian Brennan on Sun 17 Sep 2006 | 1 comment

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