Meall a Bhuachaille

Results

Only 3 Westies made it to Badaguish on Saturday for yet another revamp of this once classic race. Last couple of years the race has finished with over 2 km on track, much of it uphill and therefore there was definitely scope for improvement. In doing so they had to extend the track run at the start by at least a km but then things got much better with a reversal of the descent from MaB and then extending the route along the ridge to the west past a couple of minor tops then a cracking descent with loads of mud before a final km mainly downhill back to the finish. Manny, Brenda, and myself lined up for the gold and black which is a poor turnout for a great race like this albeit the location is a tad north. Really fast start with a mass charge along the track, Manny started sensibly and I could see him working through the crowd ahead. By the time we were on the climb and I was a couple of hundred metres past the bealach heading up MaB the race leader Dan Whitehead was coming down with what looked like an unassailable lead with Graeme Bartlett of Forres a good bit behind and then several guys including Manny a bit behind him. The wind on the ridge was fairly desperate and people with inadequate weight were finding it tough .....Hilary Ritchie of Fife was just ahead of me and she was literally blown off the path .....you had to run bending in to the wind to stand any chance of progress.

Anyway I was in my usual race mode .....dying to stop but desperate to keep up with/ahead of the poor bunch of people I actually compete with. The descent from MaB didn't give me the sort of advantage I'd usually expect as the gusts of wind were making it tricky to predict where you were going to land. Down past the bealach and over some trackless heather to a random knoll where u turn and head back up the ridge ......later discovered that Dan Whitehead had missed this and been disqualified ......at least the wind helped blow you back up to the ridge. Unfortunately once you were back up there it wanted to blow you all the way to the North sea and progress was difficult at best and at times desperate. Seemed to go for quite a while but probably only a mile and a bit and then thankfully it was off the ridge and heading down ......the wind slowed things a bit for the first 300 feet or so of descent but then you got out of the wind and the path lent itself to extremely old guys with Kamikaze fantasies and I managed to pass 5 or 6 people before it levelled out and we got to the woods. Few hundred metres through the woods and then onto a main forest track and you could see the buildings at Badaguish .......felt knackered and was going to let Trevor Shaw get away from me ......but after a few hundred metres he had only got 20m ahead so I pulled him back in and together we accelerated and caught another guy before getting to the finishing straight where we just ran in together.

Manny had done an excellent job getting to within a few seconds of Graeme Bartlett to finish second in 1:09:35, First lady was Megan Mowbray in 1:20:05, Brenda had a good run, and I was 43rd, 2nd V50 in 1:28:25 although to be fair Gordon Stewart of HHR was 1st V50 in 10th position almost 13 minutes ahead .....so its going to take more than dipping for the line to overcome that sort of margin. Forgot to mention that while the rest of Scotland was getting drenched the race took place in beautiful sunshine which really set off what is anyway one of my favourite parts of the country. New route is much improved and I thoroughly recommend it to one and all.

Posted by Brian Brennan on Mon 31 Oct 2011 | 3 comments

Category Hill Race