Last night I took part in the Caerketton hill race in the Pentlands in Edinburgh. It had been raining non stop all day so I was hoping the race which is part of the Bog and Burn series would fulfill its name and well... be boggy. I have descended off Caerketton once but the route I took was beside the ski slope which was a different route to the one the race took. Its a short race covering just 2.4k up and down with just 240 meters of ascent.
The race began on a grassy path leading up to the style. Most of this was run-able with a few hands on knees walking stretches. After the style I couldn't quite believe what was next. A very steep climb almost crawling up and certainly no running. You would have thought it was a hill race or something! There was a few people who took a diagonal route up to the right of the hill which looked more run-able but I decided just to go for the straight up option. It was brutal and took a lot out of me before I reached the first cairn. Once running round the first cairn it leveled out, with lots of puddles to run through, along with trying to avoid the onslaught of runners coming down the hill. Then a short ascent to the main cairn, round the marshals and back down. From here, I noticed there wasn't many people coming the other way, meaning either I had a bad ascent or the standard was high tonight. Given that ascents are my strength and steep descents are my weak point you can guess what happened next...
I had an absolute stinker of a descent. I haven't had any experience of that kind of steepness mixed with wet under foot conditions. For starter I went for the ski approach, going across the slope then turning for a while before heading for the diagonal path I saw other folk using earlier. Reaching the style was a relief as I knew it would be cruise control from here and I was able to relax my stride.
In the end I managed to finish 77th which is my highest placing for a hill race ever!! What makes it funny is that it was out of 78 runners! I finished in a time of 24 minutes 47 seconds. I had a target before the race of finishing within double of the winners time which was Al Anthony in 13.30.
So I managed to meet that target and I'm glad to have ticked this race off the list.
