Speed of Light - Harriers become Gazelles

Prototype Suit of Light

Tuesday evening and 7 Harriers struggled through the rush hour traffic at somewhat less than the speed of light to get from EK to Arthurs Seat in Edinburgh for the first rehearsal for the Speed of Light, a celebration of landscape art through running (?!?) which will be Scotland's contribution to the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, paralleling the Sporting Olympiad. Unusually (perhaps a first), Martin and Mandy were there before the rest of us and were preparing to stall proceedings until the rest of us arrived.

There were maybe about 100 runners assembled (50 short of what was required) and we were quickly split into equal sized groups, the bulk of the Harriers ending up with a team from Portobello Running Club under the team name "Gazelles". David Herbertson jumped ship at the first opportunity and joined a team called "Frogs". Big Mistake, the clue was in the name! Martin was hived off to "Echo" I think. That left the rest of us (Eddie and Sandra Reid, Stephen Phimister, Karen Sturgeon and myself to cement the reputation of the Harriers in the far east. A team leader had been pre-selected and had participated in course recces last week so the pressure was off, all we had to do was to follow the leader around 3 pre-determined patterns up, over and around Arthurs Seat. Each pattern had been designed by a choreographer (flown in from Holywood apparently, although it could have been Holyrood, I wasn't really paying attention) who was now sitting with a film crew and walkie talkie high up Arthurs Seat co-ordinating all from above. So the idea was to follow your leader with everyone spaced out at 5m intervals. The first of our team's sequences started with a 5 minute pause which we all managed fine although we did have to endure a lesson from one of our team on what a 5m gap should look like. Then we went from stand still to an immediate near vertical ascent which blew the team apart within about 30 seconds. After a severe climb to the summit (with several stops to re-calibrate the 5m separations) we hit the summit and noticed a vertical drop off the crag only a few metres to our right which will be interesting when this takes place for real next summer in the pitch dark! Then it was an even more severe descent down a rabbit trail through long grass with several hidden vertical drops and rocks to keep you focussed. Sequence 1 was over after about 13 minutes and only 1.2km of running. Sequence 2 sent us away on a different route but still started with another steep ascent. We were now under instruction to run 10 seconds apart as we were too close. This we mastered quite quickly and were soon showing our true artistic form. This took another 13 minutes or so. Finally we ran sequence 1 again. The whole event proved a success and last nights volunteers are guaranteed a place in the real thing next August (18 nights, 2 performances per night, although we can choose to do just one or two nights only!) when 150 runners will perform before a paying audience from 10pm to 1am. Yes really!

Only 6 prototypes of the suit of light were on display last night (see picture above, great for the pub run) so for the rehearsal we had the slightly lower tech solution of high viz vests! Further details of Speed of Light.

Alan