Kintyre Way Relay

View from Anchor Hotel, Tarbert

This would be a very rare case of me running in a race without a Calderglen vest but it had to be done as my employer was sponsoring the Kintyre Way 67 Mile Ultra and Relay (there was also a 35 mile ultra and relay starting part way around the course) and we had entered a works team and I was apparently a key man.

The race starts in Tarbert (Loch Fyne) and finishes in Campbeltown following the Kintyre Way long distance path; a very scenic part of the country. The 67 mile, 6-stage relay race started at about 6am on Saturday morning (5:30 for the solo ultra runners) which meant an overnight in Tarbert. The bad news was that I had a 4:30 am start on Friday, a long day at work and therefore a late drive from Glasgow to Tarbert, arriving at about 10pm at the very nice Sea Bed Anchor Hotel with a beautiful view over the harbour; pity I didn't spend long enough there to enjoy it though, arriving too late for dinner (I had stopped in Inverary for dinner anyway) and leaving too early for breakfast. I was already exhausted on the Saturday morning when we left for the start 100m from the hotel but regained some sleep by driving to my changeover at Tayinloan and sleeping in my car for a few hours. Perfect preparation for a 16 mile run! I had volunteered to do the longest leg, a 16 mile route starting at Tayinloan on the west coast of the Kintyre peninsula and climbing 600m over two peaks to finish back at sea level in Carradale on the east coast.

Leg 4

Runners gradually trickled in, including the first two 67 mile relay teams; a good team from Irvine AC closely followed by Stonehaven AC. My team mates arrived in the support car to confirm that we were second after the first leg but were slipping backwards on legs 2 and 3. The route instructions for my leg looked complicated for the first 2 or 3km with multiple gates, a beach and field boundaries to follow so I decided to run the first few km as a warm-up and was glad I did as some of the KW marker posts were a bit hidden by gorse. But what a beautiful start to a run, the section on the beach being amongst the most spectacular I have ever run on.

Beach at Tayinloan

Our third leg runner had doubled up with one of our reserve runners. A half hour after the 2nd team came in I saw one of those runners approaching and rapidly threw my gear in the car and rushed to the changeover only to see that it was the reserve runner and he did not have the official electronic tag to handover. It was a full half hour and several false warm-ups later when the official runner came in. Apparently this 9 mile leg had a killer section on a really stony beach and he had to walk there. By this time Irvine had been gone for over an hour (and it was David Millar, former Scottish 10k champion and still unbelievably fast who I was "chasing" along with Stonehaven, Irvine B and another non-club team, all of whom were at least a half hour ahead), so my thoughts were really on having a nice, steady run without killing myself too much as there was no hope of catching anyone.

After the first few km of beach and fields, I crossed the A83 to join a forest road (actually a wind farm access road, so  bit of a bus man's holiday for me), which climbed relentlessly for 9km from sea level to 340m above sea level. I passed one struggling ultra runner on this ascent who shouted that I was making it look too easy and he would rather be doing my leg than 67 miles (I had to agree with him). The wind turbines were visible for many miles but the road wound around the hill ascending gradually so it took a long time to actually get to the turbines at the top where I was surprised and glad to see some marshalls with water. I stopped for 30 seconds for a drink and to return their cup and heard that the conditions last year had been horrendous before starting the first stage of the descent, picking up a decent pace well below 6 minute miles for a few km.

Leg 4 profile

Being Scotland, the course had a few further climbs on what was supposed to be the main descent which buckled the legs temporarily but eventually I was in the bottom of the glen and spotted a relay runner. Soon 4th place was mine although I still thought there was no chance of catching the Irvine B team. The next section undulated through farmland and I passed several more ultra runners. As the second big hill was still to come I kept something back for that. This hill started in a forest car park and ascended up a very steep, grassy (i.e. muddy) path. Half way up this ascent it re-joined a forest road, climbing more gently for a while. Unfortunately, this was not to last as the final part of the ascent was on a very steep, rocky footpath. I would have been as well walking the first 20m of this but carried on with a running on the spot sort of style making slow progress. A supporter confirmed that I had only 100m to go to the top where the path dropped and twisted very steeply back down towards the coast. Near the bottom of this descent and only two miles from the finish I spotted an Irvine AC vest and thought that it had to be one of their runners out on a cool down run. However, on catching and passing I saw that it was the 3rd place Irvine B team and I had indeed made up another place.

We were approaching a reasonably flat single track road by this point and I thought all I had to do was hammer it to the finish a mile or so up the road and establish as big a gap as I could to Irvine. Unfortunately I had missed a key detail on the route map as the route left this road after a few metres to climb back up the hill I had just run down and approached the finish from the back rather than along the main road. The legs were burning on this last climb and the pace was not great but by now I was catching many of the ultras (probably the 35 milers who had started later). Finally, the path dived down a very steep, dark forest path with plenty of tree roots and rocks to avoid, finishing with a flight of steps (which I by-passed to avoid a trio of ultra runners who I was going to crash in to) in Carradale. I sprinted to my colleague, dibbed my dibber in the slot (don't worry, its an electronic timing device) and handed it over, stopped my watch and relaxed. Then I heard words that I have never heard in a race before: "Give me your pins!". My colleague and a support crew member descended on me like a not very well trained F1 pit crew and started trying to remove the pins from my number as they had none! All the time I am thinking I have just burst my gut for nothing catching and passing Irvine only to have them pass me standing here! But they didn't appear for a few minutes and soon my team mate was off with only a few pin jabs in his chest and fingers. My time was 1:57:01 for the 15.7 mile leg with 600m of ascent. I was happy with this given that the course had much more climbing in it than the Loop of the Loch 16 miler a month previously. I do need to work on the endurance though as I did run out of gas during the last quarter of the event, just as I did in the Loch Venachar race.

Changeover at Carradale Tearoom

Numberless, it was now time to relax for real with home made flap jacks, soup, tea and coffee available for the runners at Carradale Tearoom. Our support team soon had me fed and watered and we were on the road again to the next changeover at Ifferdale Farm. One benefit of being a race sponsor was that we could drive all the way along the farm track in our official support bus to the changeover whilst others had to leave their car and walk the 1.5 miles! This back-fired on the way back out when we encountered a local traffic problem; sheep being herded. I have never seen such stubborn sheep setting a bad example to the lambs, the sheep and lambs regularly standing up to and head butting the sheep dog! This mile and a half took a very long time.

Traffic jam at Ifferdale

As our last leg runners (a doubled up boyfriend/girlfriend pairing) were now on their way to Campeltown (14 miles and 400m of climbing away), we had a relaxed drive back to the finish where we had some sponsors duties to perform. It seemed that a few relay teams had re-passed us before this last leg although there were tales of several runners going off course (including our own runner briefly), so the situation was not at all clear. I was quite relaxed by now and had time for multiple cakes, teas and coffees at the finish. I was also early enough to get a complimentary leg massage which soon has me feeling brand new. An hour or so later, our jubilant duo came into sight and sprinted across the line (not forgetting to dib their dibbers!). To my surprise we had maintained third place ahead of Irvine B and the "Work in Progress" team although hours behind the first two. The confusion had arisen because there were also a 35 mile relay event running alongside the 67 mile event we were in. Biggest surprise was that Irvine A had dropped to second place as their 5th leg runner had missed a marker post (as so many had done) on the 6 mile leg and David Millar's destruction of my 16 mile leg (1:37 he did I think) had been in vain. So Stonehaven AC's long journey down had been worh it as they emerged as winners. Full results here.

Fully fed, watered and stretched, I got a lift back to my car and started the 3 hour drive back to Callander. It was definitely a day where the weather and scenery showed Scotland at its absolute best and especially on the drive back I reflected on the fact that Scotland offers so much to us as runners that why would we ever want to go anywhere else. Maybe an event for a Calderglen team in future years (although my work may have first call on me if we are still sponsoring it!).
Alan