Trossachs Round Two

Whilst the bulk of the Westies headed for Milngavie and and an Orienteering extravaganza, the trial fiends headed for Callander. After the near debacle of Saturday at Killie and numbers being pinned on just in time I commanded messrs Fullwood and Coyle to be at Partick for 5:30pm sharp!
The traffic was predictably heavy coming out of Glasgow and it required considerable doses of Shaun and Andrew’s good humour to keep me from combusting as I grew more frustrated at our slow progress. Anyway the traffic cleared and we reached Callander at ten to Seven and I even found time to fit in a brief warm up.
Their was a decent contingent of nine Westie men but no Westie wimmin. The course was about 5 miles by my watch and consisted of a steep climb up towards the Crags, then some undulating tracks out to Bracklinn falls, then downhill through a ride, which came out on a golf course.Their were then some more narrow trails before the sharp descent back down the narrow tree rooted path to the start.
Given that we have been closely matched recently I decided to try and follow CS McKiddie, however this plan went up in smoke when he made a much better fist of the opening climb than I and speed of into the darkness. I didn’t really feel that I had any rhythm in this race. My time was comparable to the first race as was my finish position but as was the case at Tinto recently I struggled on the climbs, which are normally my strength but ran ok on the flat and downhill.
With Chris and Gordon several minutes ahead of me the nearest Westie to me was Don, who finished about 30 seconds in front me, however he wasn’t wearing his Westie vest so I hadn’t realised it was him until we finished! My main battle was with a young Woman from Glasgow University who showed terrific speed on the flattish bits and over the Golf course, but managed to fall two or three times going downhill with me eventually passing her, after checking she was ok after she fell going back down the Crags path.
At the business end of the race Captain Niall secured another top ten placing and Will made the top 20. CSM just held of Gordon McCaffrey with both of them dipping under the 40 minute mark and Gordon placing second V60. Don held me off and finished as third V60 in just over 41 minutes and their was also a fiercely contested battle between Shaun, Gordy Bulloch and Andrew who all got round in 45 minutes. A decent run from Shaun in his first race using a head torch, and some grit showed by Gordy who finished with several cuts but put in his usual daredevil descent to come past Andrew.
A good nights work and more winter league points in the bag.

2 replies
  1. Captain Niall
    Captain Niall says:

    It’s my first year doing the Trossachs Trail races and they are definitely to be recommended. After having man flu all week I wasn’t overly excited about this race. My tactic was to run at a comfortable but fast pace and hopefully have enough in the tank to keep up with Kenny Richmond. The comfortable bit worked out! I really didn’t feel fast. And Kenny easily beat me. Plenty to improve on for the last race in the series.

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.