Eagle Hill Fell Race

An early drive to Moffat for a new race as part of the Moffat Golden Eagle festival. A nice route that starts in the town centre of road, before moving through track, trail, field, river crossing onto rough hillside and repeat in reverse back to the start/finish. Didn't feel on great form today with legs a wee bit stiff and it felt hard work on the climbs. Managed a great we sprint at the end with a 1 v 1 race with a much younger gent just pipping him at the line.

Eildon Three Hills Race

A wee trip to Eildon near Melrose for the Three Hills Race - a Scottish Championships short race this year. Felt on very good form today making a good strong ascent at pretty much maximum effort. All three little hills felt pretty long and challenging. A good finish on undulating trails. 153% of winning time was pretty good for a championship race.

Keswick Mountain Festival

A busy active long weekend for Colin at the Keswick Mountain Festival. On Friday it was the Three Peaks Challenge with a non-competitive hike or run over three hills surrounding Keswick; Catbells, Walla Craggs and Latrigg. It was a bit of an overcast and humid day but pretty good conditions for exertion. As I was feeling pretty good I decided to do the route at pace running the flats and downhills and walking fast up the hills. Some lovely views and nice to move through the crowds doing the route most of whom had started earlier in the morning. Made it round in about 4 hrs 30 mins - 18.7 miles & 1075 m climb.

On Friday night after doing the fortnightly Zoom call from a pub in the town centre I watched Bad Manners doing their hits on the festival stage. 

On Saturday I did the Back of Skiddaw Cyclosportive. The weather was similarly overcast and in parts quite windy. Having not been on the bike much this year this felt like a lot of hard work and not a great deal of fun. Pace was slow and laboured. I didn't find the route particularly interesting.

On Sunday morning I was running in a 10 K trail race. There was a boat at 10.30 to Hawes End to take us to the start. A lovely route out along the side of Derwent Water than back along the side of Catbells and then round back into Keswick. I was feeling surprisingly good after the previous two long days and was able to push along quite nicely getting a very respectable time for the hilly 10.7 km route and finishing 53rd out of 246 runners.

Definitely worth a trip back to the festival in future years. It was very well run and a nice atmosphere. I'm tempted by the 50K trail race! 

 

 

Aberdeen Weekend Orienteering

With few events happening at the moment it becomes necessary to travel a bit to get some proper orienteering. A fairly long drive to the north of Aberdeen and the dunes at Balmedie for a SOL event described as a medium distance orienteering event - shorter than the usual SOLs. I choose to try Black course though which increased the distance to a more normal event. Nice terrain and landscape with lots of challenge from the complexity of the dunes but easy visibility of the features making it difficult to get too lost even if finding the specific part of the dunes was difficult.

Was generally pleased with my navigation for most of the event but had two disastrous controls with big errors. Last of the 11 finishers on the black course which wasn't a surprise.

A short walk along the shore after the orienteering.

After than too a drive up the coast to Newburgh and the mouth of the river Ythan. The estuary was teaming with birdlife and there was a seal colony on the far side of the river with lots of seals in the water keeping watch over the humans.

A night in a Premier Inn and the next morning an onward drive to Glen Tanar near Aboyne. Pretty wild forest and a course with long difficult unrunnable legs. Navigation a real challenge so pleased that I did find all the 10 controls I looked for even if some required substantial relocation efforts. The first 9 controls took 2.5 hours at which point I decided to take the fastest route back to the last control. Not the most fun but rewarding and good practice. Need to be more realistic on course choice for the toughest standard O courses.