Julie, Andrew and I travelled to Selkirk on Sunday morning to run the Philiphaugh hill races, and had a good blether all the way there. Andrew and I ran the 7 miles, and Julie ran the 4 mile race which covers part of the longer route. Both of them had already run the Berwick Law race earlier in the week, pretty good effort! The weather was very windy but thankfully dry.
This is another of these ‘annoyingly runnable’ races, as described by Rob, and I did a bit more walking uphill than I probably should have, with my usually ‘happy on the uphill’ legs feeling heavy from the last weekend’s race. I could see the speedy Susan Ridley up ahead, but she was strong on the uphill and I didn’t have a hope of catching her. I’d lost sight of the other three speedy ladies ahead too. Andrew wasn’t far behind me either, so when it came to the downhill I tried to put in some more effort! One of the marshals clearly thought I was in need of some downhill advice and yelled some helpful comments about leaning forward etc, but I was mainly trying not to fall down any rabbit holes under the heather.
The final part of the race reminds me of XC with some nice running through fields, but I had nothing left for a sprint finish. Hey ho, I still enjoyed it! Julie was waiting at the finish, and Andrew came in soon after me. Then we headed back to the rugby club for some good food and a cuppa. One of the lovely things about these hill races is getting to know some of the other runners who come along to races througout the year.
Well done to Julie for her second hill race, and coming in 5th overall and 2nd lady! I think we’ll be seeing you at many more hill races, Julie :-).
4 mile:
5th Julie Hand 0:31:47 (2nd lady)
7 miles:
32nd Gillian Cairns 0:59:18
40th Andrew McDermott 1:03:43
Well done
Well done everyone. You can’t beat a helpful marshall shouting advice to you!
Well done hilly harriers! 🙂