Two Breweries 2006

I’ve run this three times now, and each time I’ve had a shocker. This year delivered a personal worst by something like half an hour, and the funny thing is, I thought I was in pretty good nick going into the race. It was unreasonably warm for almost October, which I think slowed times in general, but I don’t think I can blame the heat for such a miserable performance. It all started well enough, and for the first 40 minutes was more-or-less in touch with the lead group of Whitlie, Donnelly (Colin – not John!) and a couple of Boggies. Tis was, of course, once we’d passed neutralised Upson’s now traditional 2-mile initial sprint, which saw him a good 200m ahead of the field at one point. After the first real climb up to the first checkpoint, which I reached feeling relaxed and pretty chipper in 5th place came the long tussocky descent into Glen Sax. This took probably about ten minutes, but in these ten minutes I went from feeling sprightly and optimistic to knackered and resigned to a depressing plod over more hills than I cared to think about to the finish.

On the haul out of Glen Sax, which is a bugger at the best of times, I lost a few places, to Andy Kitchen and some old codger from Moorfoot who usually does ‘the half-marathon circuit’. I told him he had my pity, but I don’t think he knew what I was on about, and he skipped off ahead with his beard and grey hair. Next to appear behind me, after that nasty long contour towards Stob Law, were David Riach and the lumbering hulk of Phil Mowbray – clearly in one of the periodic “pies and beer” phases of his training programme. I’m not sure what alarmed me more, the though of losing my “firsy Westie” berth, of the prospect of being passed by someone tubby enough to be my father.

Phil Caught me first on the descent to Manor Water. I was descending like a complete nancy, and he wasn’t much better. We both stumbled repeatedly, but when I suggested it might help if we held hands, he didn’t take me up on the offer. We ran chatting to the feed station, where a very chipper David caught us and announced cheerfully that we were half way. I’d already been struggling for an hour, so I’m afraid I had to kill him. Well – I would have if I could have caught him, but he pranced off into the distance with Phil chugging along behind, both of them leaving me to sulk on my own.

I was carrying two full-sized Mars Bars, a Twix , 3 pork pies and half a bag of jelly babies, and over the next few miles I scoffed the lot, in a desperate attempt to put some bounce back into my completely lifeless legs. It didn’t work, of course, and I trudged on, walking the climbs and shuffling and cursing on the descents. Lost yet more places on the way down to Stobo, and another couple on the track through the woods, which was a hell of a lot longer than I’d remembered. Chris appeared in the distance behind me, which galvanised me briefly. He almost caught me on the boggy tussocky crap on the way to the foot of Trahenna, but it was obvious that he was toiling as much as I was, and when I hooked up with a nice bloke called Olly from Carnethy and chatted my way up the hill, Chris dropped away again.

Managed to regain a modicum of oomph on the descent from Trahenna, and stayed with Olly until we hit the run-in on the road. Here he took off like a startled hare, and after a glance over my shoulder confirmed that no-one (i.e. Chris) was within striking distance, I plodded gently to the finish in something like 20th place, somewhere between 3:35 and 3:40, I think. David had run a strong second half, and seemed pretty happy with 9th place. Steward retained his title in 2:52, a couple of minutes ahead of Colin. Chris finished a place or two behind me in a bit of a sorry state, and lay on the grass twitching and grunting for a while. Quite a while, in fact. Might still be there, for all I know…

Dave Calder and Graham Kelly completed the Westies team, which may have secured third spot. Not sure, as I couldn’t be arsed staying for the prize-giving – I’d already wasted enough brownie points. Instead, after 2 cups of soup served at the temperature of molten lava, I clutched my complementary bottle of Greenmantle to my breast and made my way ignominiously home.