Ochil 2000s

Results

It was a much smaller crowd that turned out for the Ochil 2000s this year, with the three Davids (Riach, Dickson and Rodgers), John McInally and myself  representing Westies. The weather was perfect at the starting line – dry and no wind or strong sun, but soon deteriorated once we were on the hill, with us eventually ending up running through a hail storm. Hector Haines shot off at the start and was hardly seen for the rest of the race. After a nasty accident getting his leg stuck in a fence (it took the combined efforts of Stewart Whitlie and myself to get him free) Al Anthony set off in pursuit to finish second. I just tried to stick with Mark Harris and Stewart Whitlie and save as much energy for the second half as possible. This seemed to work, as I actually had enough energy to run down Dumyat (though cramp was an issue by then) to the end to finish 5th. I was chuffed to see that my time was a fair bit faster than last year. There were good performances by the Westies all round, with David Riach 3rd vet, but some very tired looking faces at the end.