Anyway. We prepared ourselves by going a run around Gullane the day before. It wasn't very sunny, so not much in the way of b****rf***s, however it was a warm and atmospheric day and we stayed out for a long time, playing on the beach with shells and that :-)
Peter was saying he'd had a long hard week and he didn't feel like racing at all. My running had been totally dud during the week when it tipped with rain for 2 days in a row.
The weather seemed nice enough for the 7 hills, however we were both still sleepy and unconvinced as we wandered up the road to Calton Hill for my 9.45 challenger start. We couldn't get much more spoiled with this race really. It isn't too early and it's a half mile from home. I didn't even have to set my alarm early - just get up at the usual time and get on with it.
We met Emma Hargrave going up the road and she told us about a 100 mile walk she'd done recently. It had taken...35 hours? and had gone over night and her mum had had to pull out because she was ill. It sounded like an ordeal and put the day's work into perspective. Emma wasn't running because she said her feet were still kind of...funny. 35 hours of walking will make a foot funny.
It didn't seem like we left the house early but then it felt like forever hanging around for the start. I spent it moaning to Aileen and then to a friend called Tim Neighbour who was also there. Tim used to actually be a neighbour, and although I used to run, nobody else did. My running was seen as a quirk I think. We used to all (Peter and I, Tim's wife Nicky and Tim himself) share the practice of drinking too much and saying too much until the early hours however. We would have been surprised to discover that we would all be meeting up post-marathon some 20 years hence - and then again at the 7 hills.
Tim was telling me he'd been to see Half Man Half Biscuit the other night - yet another one of these bands that I'd assumed never made it past the 80s but has apparently been circulating ever since. My friend Steve used to like them so I could just remember snatches he used to sing along with. "Is that a Roger Dean poster on your wall?" I hummed to myself, but I couldn't get it. By the magic of the internet I was able to find it just now when I looked. Oh how it comes flooding back.
(WARNING!! It's a day later and I've remembered why I don't like half man half biscuit. The horrid song that I have posted below droned round and round in my head as I tried to sleep last night. The song has a certain merit, capturing the moment when you're sick of something and take a step back from it, but it continues to pull holes in thing after thing without offering anything of merit itself. I can't believe they are still putting ill-thought through and churlish sentiments to uninspiring music. Watch it at your own risk!)
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Eventually the start did come and we were off. I felt middling. Not as terrible as in the middle of last week but not sprightly either. There seemed to be more challengers than ever before. There was a thick pod of young burly rugby blokes all spitting, shouting to each other and carrying big unnecessary rucksacks of water that kept surrounding me. I couldn't seem to shake them. Eventually they disappeared off forwards. I was glad to see the back of them and I hope I beat them. I think I maybe passed some of them going up the muddy banks at the Hermitage.
The run through Stenhouse and Chesser past the Asda was the worst I remember it. It seemed to go on and on into a warm head-wind, and the traffic was obnoxious. I wasn't in the mood for risking life and limb - I wasn't going at that kind of pace, so I had quite long stands at the side of the road. I saw some wanker in a 4X4 call an older gent runner running alongside me an "arsehole". That prompted a spewing of invective from me about fat bastards who were in a hurry to get to the sausage roll counter.
Let's think about some of the nice things. Being a local race, a lot of runners had turned out to spectate and support, which was lovely. Because of this I've a good set of race photos from the day and without a £30 price-tag! Also there was water and jelly babies and juice in good supply all the way round.
Let's have some photos.
Photos courtesy of Michael Philp.
I felt pretty done by the time I got to Craiglockhart, but then the scrambling up the muddy bank under the lovely cool trees cheered me up. I got a nice cheer from HBTs who told me I was the only one who was running up the hill properly so that spurred me on.
Getting up to the Braids Hills always feels like you've broken the back of the race. I passed Aileen here. I'm sure we've passed at pretty much the same point before. I really enjoyed getting off-road again and running across the golf-course, even though my legs were fairly done by this point.
Then climbing up to the top of Blackford Hill from the Hermitage, I passed Jenni from club. That was pleasing just because she is so much faster than me on the road now. I've not done much in the way of hills since the Carnethy 5 in February but I seemed far stronger on the hills than on the road.
By Arthur's Seat, however, Jenni had passed me again. The wall behind Pollock Halls has become increasingly dodgy for climbing and the squeeze through the turnstile is no longer feasible. I'd made up my mind in advance not to bother trying to do the wall thing, but just as I was going into Pollock Halls Nick Williamson passed me and for some reason I followed him - quite a long way round I think - although his response to that when I said it afterwards was an offended "F-you!" - but then when I got to the wall someone had put up some forlorn looking mesh that I think was supposed to be helpful for climbing. It was flimsy and insecure, the wall was crumbling with big blocks of masonry falling off, and the whole was topped off with two strands of barbed wire. "Fuck this whole thing entirely" I thought to myself and ran back out the other end as I'd originally intended to. Whether I had now lost any chance of catching Jenni was yet to be seen. And perhaps Aileen had gained ground or indeed passed me! I certainly couldn't take anything for granted.
The worst of all worlds. A whistle-stop tour of the halls.
Nothing to be done, though, except get home as quickly as possible. As I made my way over the grass to the sleeper steps Steve Crane appeared out of nowhere and offered me a gel. Now I've never seen Steve since last November and the end-of war celebrations so it was a surprise to encounter him now. In fact I never fully saw him, as he was behind me. It was nice of him to emerge from deep cover to come and support anyway! I couldn't take him up on the gel however because by this time I was full of squash and jelly beans and jelly babies and I had been thinking it wouldn't be the worst thing if I could throw it all up in a big orange fountain. That never happened though.
Going up to the scrambly bit past the sleeper steps I saw there was a man down with what looked like heat-stroke, lying in the stony gully. He had two men with him already so I didn't have much to add, so didn't stop. I felt guilty every step of the way but I didn't have a phone so couldn't phone anyone - and I couldn't have got him down from there and I couldn't even have told an ambulance where to go because all my names for places on Arthur's Seat are made up! He was duly rescued by a Dunbar Runner and another guy who apparently was an army doctor, so he was in good hands. I was moving on up. My legs by this time were giving out, so I was leaning on them fell-runner style as if my legs from the knees down were just poles that I was planting in the ground. Topping out over the rise I could see, just ahead of me, Jenni Owens....so I gave chase and caught her just before the summit...
2 Photos above - Eoin Lennon
Photo David Worrall
Photo David Worrall
I took a couple of wrong turns on the usually-familiar route down from the top. This has happened to me before towards the end of the 7 Hills. It is All Too Much. Craig Taylor said something similar as he ran past me, saying he had never in all his days taken a worse route from the summit. Anyway, we were getting there. I didn't want to drop a stitch, so kept on running. On the way up the wee lane towards Calton Hill it was all walkers and so I chugged past them. Then it was the last zig-zag before the top, so I kept on chugging. Then it was the last grassy bit and then it was....hurray, time to walk. A nice Porty came up to me and tried to say encouraging things about how was my race "I made a whole new set of fucking mistakes I've never made before" and maybe I could improve on that "No, I won't ever improve on it now." In retrospect, maybe that was a bit full on. He just got the first response fresh off the press. It was my 3rd worst time out of 12 and I was not very down-hearted about it at all. It had been funny, mostly, the Chesser stretch being the worst. Now it was time to eat rhubarb tart and lie on the grass....
Peter had a good race and came 1st MV50 adding £45 prize money (tokens) to the £50 he got for being 1st O55 in the marathon.
Later when I saw the results I saw I was the first Porty challenger in, and that seemed pretty good.
I don't know what's next. It might be the 2 miler at the Meadows on Wednesday night! It might also not be.
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