Durisdeer Dawdle

14th June 2008

The British Championship cavalcade of superstar runners rolled into sleepy Durisdeer to hurtle round this circuit of rolling grassy hills at unbelievable speed.

The start was the maddest of all mad starts. A kamikaze descent of 250+ runners to a burn and bridge crossing, before hitting the first long uphill slog.

I plodded slowly upwards with David Riach, watching the close-packed gold and black WWW vests of Manny, Nige and Crawford pulling away.

On the steep descent to the first road crossing, I passed David and Elke, and soon moved up to one place behind Crawford, before my overheated brain suddenly decided to follow Alan Smith on a wild-goose chase up the hillside, foolishly thinking this might be a cunning short cut.

It wasnt’t. And by the time I regained the main path, David, Elke and Crawford were all off in the distance, and I had to work hard to re-pass all the runners I had recently worked hard to pass!

I got a slight 2nd wind heading to the 2nd road crossing and passed a labouring Des Crowe and a few others, before the final hands on knees flog up Well Hill, and was almost within reach of Crawford again. But once descending, Des and Crawford flew away, whilst I bumbled down at my own pace, stopping to re-tie my flapping shoelaces, and letting Andy Spencely and Dave Scott get past.

On the final descent, I picked off Andy and one other, but couldn’t quite reel in Dave Scott who seems on incredible form at the moment for an old man.

At the sharp end, Rob Jebb won by 7 seconds from Morgan Donnelly in a record time of 1:21:52, whilst Angela Mudge knocked exactly 20 minutes off the ladies record to finish in 1:34:42.

Photos