Baddinsgill Round

26th August 2012

Results | Photos

A new race organised by Nick Brown of Corstorpine AAC. Kind of a cross between the Pentland Skyline and Cort-ma Law.

A nice low key event that felt more like a training run at first, as Fergus Johnston, Jonathan Carpenter and Tom Ferrington took up the early pace, followed by myself, Chris O’Brien and Peter Buchanan.

As the race unfolded, it quickly became clear that the terrain and route finding were both somewhat more challenging than they appeared on the map. After the first few tops, Fergus and Jonathan were pulling away into the distance, with Chris O’Brien giving chase, and myself and Tom plodding along behind, and Peter Buchanan not far behind us, given by the yelps as he fell into the pools of man-eating bog at several of the cols.

At East Cairn Hill, Fergus and Jonathan were faffing around looking at the map, which meant that on the descent to Cauldstane Slap the first 5 runners all pretty much re-grouped. Fergus and Jonathan then pulled away again, but this tim with Tom, and I was left chasing Chris who took a strange route off West Cairn Hill in an attempt to shave a corner, but this just lead into rough heather, so I veered back to the fenceline sooner than Chris, by which time the first 3 runners were virtually out of sight.

The running was quite nice for a while on short spongy grass, but then suddenly degenrated into heather bashing to get across the hollow at Wolf Craigs. I was trying to keep working and running when I could on the sopping wet ground over Byrehope Mount, aiming to stay ahead of Chris and maybe catch some of the three runners ahead.

I felt reasonably strong going up the final hill, King’s Seat, and was fairly sure I would catch at least one of the runners ahead. I wasn’t quite sure of the route down to the finish once we turned, and perhaps didn’t quite take the optimum line. However I still seemed to be catching Jonathan Carpenter pretty quickly, who was strangely running in an old pair of cross country spikes.

As we crested Lamb Rigg and saw the finish flags, I had more or less drawn level with Jonathan, until he suddenly took off again like a scalded cat leaving me trailing in his wake. Running into the finish, I was suprised to find that Fergus had gone AWOL, hence Tommy Ferrington won the race.

Chris O’Brien has posted his own tremendous blow by blow account of the race here: http://caac.org.uk/content/1005454