So at last Skyline day came around yesterday. In order to distract myself from thinking about it and not go for some foolish run the day before (it's easy to do), I signed up for a dreams workshop. It was pretty good actually, thanks for asking.
I didn't sleep all that well the night before the race, which was a shame. It was a cold, grey steely day - not very inviting. I used to be used to the whole adrenaline-fuelled, tension-rising thing of races but I now no longer am, and I don't really like it. Everything went fine though and we got parked up in plenty of time. The list of things that can go wrong gets shorter right up to the start-line. I even managed a pee in the gorse 10 minutes before kick off, so come start time everything was as good as it could be.
I didn't bother warming up beyond a 60 second jog beforehand, because the race is long enough. The first couple of miles felt pretty awful as a result though. I reckon I need 3 miles for my engine to start working properly. There were some narrow bits right at the start so the first run up past the ski-slope was quite start and stop - frustratingly so, but there was nothing to be done, so I tried not to worry about it.
By Turnhouse I was feeling fine - in a smoother rhythm. Andrew Stavert came barrelling past on the road down to Flotterstone but I went past him again on the uphills. The thing that was foremost in my mind was respect for the distance, and just how bad you can feel if you do too much too soon. Peter and I have done these hills (Turnhouse to West Kip) so frequently recently that they seemed very manageable. I know every twist and turn of the paths and I know how hard I can go at them.
Summiting West Kip. Photo courtesy of the powers of facebook and John Viv Busby.
I had been a bit worried about the cut-off time for the Drove Road of 2hrs 15 mins. I've lost all my Garmin stats for old races so wasn't sure what was reasonable. I thought I remembered that it was 5 or 10 minutes over the 2 hours when I tended to get there, but have no objective proof. I arrived at the Drove Road water station in just under 2 hours though, which felt reassuring. I was surprised to discover that Richard Hadfield was just behind me and while we exchanged a few words (I wanted to re-tie my laces, drink water and eat a bourbon cream), Andrew Stavert barrelled through once again, very focused, only pausing to grab a drink and discard it, and then taking off hard down the Drove Road. Richard wanted to keep him in sight and took off too. I finished off my water and bourbon cream and didn't bother trying to stay in touch. Both of them would take me apart on the road and I wanted to give my tummy a bit of time to absorb the water.
Mrs Doyle was just so excited she was going to get water and a lovely biscuit too!
My tummy wasn't really for absorbing cold water and a bourbon cream on the way down a bumpy track and the whole lot came back on me in a painless, if rather unpleasant brown fountain of biscuit and acidic water. I was glad there was no-one near me as I spat it into the nearby reeds. I didn't feel sick or ill, so wasn't concerned in that sense, but I'd made the decision not to carry water, which meant it looked likely I'd be feeling pretty dry before the race was over.
Hare Hill is a tussocky hell and I hate it. There's nothing that I consider runnable after you get to the top and make your way across the boggy, heathery waste to the descent. I did my best though. The organisers had set a route to keep the landowners happy, and I quite liked that because despite three recces I never found a satisfactory way across it - so at least an enforced route took the pain of decision-making out of it. I arrived at the board with red and white tape at the top of the descent but wasn't sure which way we were intended to go. I followed a couple of young guys to the left but then corrected when a woman down in the Cleugh shouted up that we should be further to the right. None of this was fast but it gave my muscles a change at least. Coming off West Kip I'd started to feel that I was too old for all this. My hips were hurting, and my knees, - just in an achy way. The different terrain in the 2nd half, although taxing, was softer under foot and demanded a different gait and this eased my legs up.
So Black Hill - we got directed to go through the gate before heading up, which I wasn't all that happy about because I had the earlier route pretty much down. However, it was fine. The route up there has deteriorated in the last few weeks with too many recces and the rain so the running was a bit slippy, squidgy and uneven but not bad. There was a female marshal at the top of the hill and she was making a big fuss of the runners. "Here comes number 52!" She shouted at me. "Number 52 is looking VERY good. VERY good indeed!". I couldn't help but smile.
The bog at the top of Black Hill is kind of legendary. I'd almost be disappointed if it was dry. The far side of Black Hill has recently had its heather cut and I've been finding that this has made for the best running down towards Bell Hill there's been for years. I enjoyed seeing people who clearly hadn't recced waste their efforts on the muddy and uneven path when the short heather at the side was almost perfect running and cut a really nice economic route to the bottom.
Going back up Bells Hill is never easy. I'd hoped to have a caffeine gel at this point to give me courage for the last 4 hilly miles home, but with no water and already having a slight headache I just couldn't risk it. I had an isotonic gel with me too and I thought maybe I could chance that, as it shouldn't make me more dehydrated, but it was bowfing - some kind of concentrated, super-sweet berry horror. I offered it to a fellow traveller, who wasn't interested, and so I emptied it out on the grass.
By this time I was fairly predictably going uphill better than those around me and then getting passed on the downhills. I have no idea what happened in real terms of how many I passed and how many passed me and stayed past. I was getting to recognise a few people though.
At the foot of harbour hill there were some people out with jelly babies and stuff. I asked if they had any water - and they said "No, that chap just had the last of the water" indicating a ginger haired guy just ahead. I thought that was more name and shame than he really needed! I said not to worry, but a tall young guy who I'd swapped places with a few times offered me a shot of the contents of his camelbak. This seemed a very good-natured thing to do and I thought 'Well why not'. We were perfect strangers but I had to get close in enough to get a right sook on his tubing! I couldn't get any at first until he twisted the mouth-piece for me. We tried to keep moving at the same time. I got a little bit to drink, some half sweet half salty electrolyte stuff. It didn't quite solve my fluid balance problem but the interaction was heartening. He said well done for keeping running up the hills and I explained I was just trying to run half and half to keep going for the last bit. He hadn't run it before so wanted to know if we were nearly there. I said yes, we were on the last stretch. The ginger-haired water-stealer said that we weren't. I could sympathise with that point of view, but towards the end of the Skyline it's best to think either good thoughts or nothing at all. Take it from me.
Nearly there!
So then that long roundy hill with the metal thing on top. I was walking and jogging up that hill when I came across Camp Jones, which consisted of Mary Lye and a tent on a slope out of which was issuing gales of laughter. God knows what was going on in there. Now Mary, God love her, had some actual water, which she let me have, and then she ran up ahead of me to take a picture. I reached deep down inside to see if I could find a smile. It is a matter of wonder to me how I manage to look just quite so like Mrs Doyle off Father Ted when I'm out in the hills.
And then it was just the last few hills. I saw what I thought was Andrew ahead and I tried to take a sneaky higher route so he wouldn't see me. If I could just get past him without him realising I could probably beat his ass. But Bert Logan and Amy Kerr were at the top of the hill and started shouting out to us. Stavert woke up out of his trance and started to run again. On the downhills he was uncatchable, and I didn't even try.
I found out later that Richard Hadfield had gone past 5 minutes before.
Amy got me just after my smile was over!
Andrew awakes.
I could see from my watch that it was now likely that I was going to make it under the 4 hours unless I did something stupid. The most likely stupid thing to do would be tripping and taking a header down the path, so I avoided all of that kind of thing.
The significance of 4 hours was just that I'd always kept under 4 hours, even in my slowest Skylines. This had been more by chance than planning, but I didn't want to break it.
It has been 7 years since I've run it, and I haven't done much in the way of hills in the intervening time, so there was no real reason to think I should be able to do what I used to do, but that didn't mean that I didn't want to.
So it was a very pleased and tired me that got to the finish line in 3.57.
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