The Ben

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The Ben

I think the BNRA offering £1000 to anyone breaking the record times for the race was always a safe bet and just a little bit tacky to 99.9% of the field.

I'm glad I wasn't in a position to have to refuse it!

Conditions on the day were very good, if only a bit warm on the lower 500ft.

Current record holder Kenny Stuart set us off at the usual mad skelp around the Claggan pitch and the first undulating tarmac mile to Auchintee spread the numbers out before hitting the hill track.

Ronnie cruised past past just before Auchitee and I never expected to see much of him after that.

I made the basic mistake of not drinking enough (anything actually!) before the start and I was already looking for hand outs from spectators and taking scoops from the few poluted burns we skipped across.

I was to suffer for this later on.

I kept a steady pace uphill pulling in bodies all the way and was surprised to find the familiar yellow vest of RG coming back to me once again! - was I having a stormer or was RG having a bad/easy/both sort of a day?

A good scoop of water was had at the Red Burn crossing before the hard slog up the steep scree slopes, and eventually getting past a fighting RG, although I was aware he was battling hard to stay in touch with me. I couldn't pull back any other places from here to the summit and my concentration was all focused on getting running again on the gentler slopes of the upper path.

The weather was perfect up there with a slight breeze and mist to keep the nasty sun away.

My legs turned to jelly when I turned in 16th place in about 1:09, and I was about to pay the price of not preparing properly by drinking.

I quickly felt sluggish and weak on the descent and the 30 second gap I had on RG at the top disappeared very quickly with his footsteps right behind me as we went into the very steep Red Burn gulley section which is not for the faint hearted, with very loose sharp rocks chasing your ankles down the hill and a series of hairy jumps and slides to content with.

As soon as we left the gulley Ronnie was past me and I worked hard to stay with him until the dreaded Green Wall were he effortlessly drifted away from me and caught 2/3 places ahead.

I deliberately took it easy down the grass to avoid busting limbs & to try and save a bit for the faster 3 miles to the finish.

At the bottom of the grass I had another swig of dodgy water from the burn and I staggered up onto the main path again with legs like rapidly melting butter, but managed to get a rythme going again and started to motor down the technically tricky footpath.

One second you're striding out at full pelt, skipping over rocky steps and the next you braking hard over a horrible cobbled sections trying not to crunch an ankle.

Rg was well out of sight but there was a another yellow vest (Ian Magee, Skipton AC) ahead of me that became my target and I slowly pulled it back and got past just before the stile near the bottom of the track. From there I started to pick up the pace knowing a PB was possible and I tried hard back along the road clocking 6:20 from Auchitee back to collapse in a slevering heap over the finish line happy with another PB and 16th place, but knowing if I had drank something before hand I could well have done a lot better, especially on the descent.

A steady trickle of Westies came in after, the most notable being Luke Arnott (was the an HBT t-shirt?)in a superb debut time of 1:52:08 and good 90 seconds ahead of Chris Upson who also worked hard to get PB. Trevor was comfortably under the 2 hour mark then a bit of a gap before Murdo 2;05;39, Steffan 2;06:26, Dave R 2:09:30 and Nigel "fat boy looks like Chas Campbell" Scott in 2;11;33. Exactly an hour later, the beastly form of Graham Benny thundered round the pitch to finish comfortably 4mins inside the cut off time!

Not a single Wummin!!!!!!!!!!!

Shame on you!

Anyway with only the winner,Ian Holmes(now with 5 wins equally Dave Canons record from the 70's), getting inside the 1:30 mark, the BNRA's £1000 was well safe - probably to be spent on one of their in-house hoolies later in the year!

A great day out was followed by several pints in the Grog & Gruel later in the evening.

Well done Westies!