Criffel Hill Race

Six Westies were in this race but only 3, myself and Pete and Elsie, were wearing club colours ( unless the others' Westies tops were hidden several layers down ). The other three were Alasdair Duke-Wordrop, Frazer Laird, and Joanne McGuire and hopefully we’ll meet some time in the future. It’s a long way to travel for a hill-race particularly if you live in Perthshire but, as I’d never done it I thought it was time to give it a try. For those of you who haven’t done it before this race is a great leveler as at least half of it is basically a peat bog on a slope. The race starts/finishes in the lovely wee village of New Abbey a few miles south of Dumfries and until last year was organized by Pete and Elsie when they handed over responsibility. People had told me how muddy and treacherous this race was but I’d thought they must be exaggerating things a bit …..and so when the race organizer said it was muddier than usual I still wasn’t too concerned …..I should have been. Going up wasn’t too bad but trying to stay on your feet and make fast progress on the way down was bloody tough although I gained several places on the way down because most people were even bigger woosses than I was. People’s times were generally 2 or 3 minutes slower than previous years. Brian Marshall was 1st in 56:56, Tom Smith 2nd in 58:12 with Adam Anderson 3rd in 1:01:06. 1st lady was Charlotte Morgan in 1:12:42. Westies finished as follows 19th Alasdair Duke-Wordrop 1:12:59
20th Frazer Laird 1:13:16
28th Brian Brennan 1:19:07
38th Pete Baxter 1:28:15
41st Joanne McGuire 1:29:41
48th Elspeth Scott 1:40:15

A good turnout for the Westies although I didn’t discover it until later. A great race in a lovely part of the country which I can heartily recommend.

Posted by Brian Brennan on Mon 21 Mar 2011 | 2 comments

Category Hill Race