The Devil's Burden Hill Relay

The Moorfoots managed to put together 18 runners and 3 teams for the Devil's Burden hill relays yesterday.  I think we should be proud of ourselves since this is probably 2/3 of the active membership of the club.

I was placed in Team B and allocated myself to the longest and hilliest leg 3, with Colin Williams (stronger than me).  Unfortunately, a pullout in Team A meant that Colin got promoted and Steve Martin ran leg 3 in his stead.  Steve is a fast road runner (much faster than me) but I'm probably a bit stronger on the hills, which meant we probably weren't perfectly matched.  Still, not far off.

We took over from Aegir, who ran a great leg despite a chest infection, and set off up the steep climb on to Bishop Hill.  There were a number of routes to the top and we definitely didn't pick the best one - we should have followed the Fife AC pairing but they got away from us.  We (ok, it was me) made another route choice error off Bishop and I slavishly followed the route map rather than the other runners and we got bogged down across marshy, tussocky, snowy ground before the climb to West Lomond.  Once on the climb to Lomond, a group of runners caught up to us, which was frustrating.

After regrouping at the summit, Steve and I ran well to the end, descending together and keeping a decent pace to Strathmiglo, for a final time of 1:17, probably about 5 minutes slower than I'd hoped but still decent.

We placed 37th out of 120 teams.  Moorfoots A placed 6th and Moorfoots C were 91st.

I'm running well at the moment, I've definitely made a jump recently and my 60 mile weeks have yet to make a difference, since I've just got to that mileage in the last couple of weeks.  I'm hoping to do well at Carnethy and may even taper a bit for it.