Carnethy 5

Whilst John K et.al. were enjoying an easy 31 mile jog along the WHW I was doing some real running over 6 miles of the Pentland hills. ;-)

The Carnthy 5 is one of the classic scottish hill races, taking in five peaks in the Pentland hills. Superbly organised by the Carnethy hill running club, 500 runners are bussed out the the start line and then returned the the school for showers & lunch.

This was my third time running this race. First time in 2005 (1:13:11) and again in 2006 (1:17:18). This year wasn't a PB or a PW at 1:16:21. Looking back at my logs I can see that I was running about 30sec/5K faster at around the time I ran in 2005. In 2006 the course was much icier which I think accounted for much of my slowdown. This year, the ground was frozen in many places which I find very hard to cope with on the descents. Having good descending skills really does make a huge difference in this sort of race.

As to the actual race, I was rather dreading the waiting around in the field to get started, but the weather was kind to us (for February) and apart from a bit of a wind, we had blue skies and sunshine. Indecisive as ever, I couldn't decide whether to run in shorts or leggings and opted for leggings, a move I was regretting within the first 200 yrds. Not that leggings were really a problem, just that they were unnecessary as my legs really don't seem to feel the cold once on the move.

The race plan was to sprint to the first gate/stile where there's a bottle neck and then just hope to hold my position as best as I was able after that. As ever, feet were soaked almost from the outset in the bogs preceeding the gate and I managed to take a tumble (on to soft grass fortunately) by tripping over a rock sticking out of the ground. Still, I was almost immediately back on my feet and shortly thereafter, through the gate.

A race of this length with 500 runners means that getting past folk when you're going up hill is hard, it's jst so tempting to settle into the pace of those around you, even when you could go a bit faster. Consequently, I think I lost quite a bit of time in the early stages that I could only hope to make up on the flat bits. Every time we came to a downhill bit, I lost a lot of time (and position) due to my lack of downhill technique. In particular, I lost a lot of time and places coming down off West Kip and off Carnethy. My hill works on the roads hadn't done much to prepare me for running down rough hills although I think it has reduced the damage to my quads which feel fine today. Either they're going to hurt like b*ggery tomorrow or I wasn't going fast enough. ;-)

Anyhow, not too displeased with my time. Sub-75 would have been nicer and sub-70 a lot nicer but without better technique and doing a lot more hill racing, it's probably as much as I could have expected at the moment. Still, having dipped a toe back in the hill racing water, maybe I'll try my hand at a few more races, if only to stop Alex having it all his own way in the club hill running championship. ;-)

Today, I've been for an easy run along the cycle path again (my 6.9 mile route) and the legs feel fine. Looking forward to a run on the WHW next weekend with Mark & Ellen.