The Devil was Blowing Hard in Fife on Saturday

A well matched team (at least in terms of height!)

The intrepid sextet of Sandy Hayden, Jim Holmes, Andrew Buchanan, Eddie Reid, Kenny Leinster and Chas Steven headed through to Fife on Saturday morning for a very dreich Devil's Burdens Hill Relay. Billy Buchanan and myself joined Lorraine Buchanan to lend our support and to help with the logistics.

Whereas the recce was carried out in arctic conditions, the snow had completely gone by race day to be replaced with horizontal rain and the hills hidden in the mist.

As Sandy was on the first leg and the team had yet to be registered, Billy, Kenny and Sandy left EK at 7am to register the team, collect the numbers and get Sandy onto the startline. The remainder of the team were leaving EK at 8am. It wouldn't be a Calderglen event without an Eddie Reid wind up and Saturday was no exception. Whilst on the road to Fife, Kenny received a phone call from Eddie to say that Chas had not turned up and that Billy would have to do the last leg. Kenny relayed the news to Billy and for at least 10 seconds, the interior of the car was blue, particularly when Kenny mentioned that his trail shoes would fit Billy. However, 10 seconds is all it took for Billy to realise that the caller was not to be taken seriously!

Jim and Andrew at the end of leg 2 with leg 3 runners climbing on the skyline

Sandy was off on schedule on the modified leg 1 route of 7.5km. There were two checkpoints on this leg but as always on leg 1, there were queues for the clippers, providing some welcome rest time. Sandy's legs were still tired from the recce and Thursday's run but she still ran a fine, well paced leg, flying down the final hill to hand over to Jim and Andrew. Jim is an old hand at this event whereas Andrew had not done a hill race before let alone this one. Leg 2 is a navigational leg and the runners must run in pairs for safety. This meant Jim was in control of the pace, which was a good situation to be in when accompanying a fast runner! Leg 2 is 11.5km and over 700m of ascent. This is the toughest leg. If that was not bad enough, on the summits of each of the hills, Jim reported that the winds were 60 or 70mph and that it was almost comical watching runners try to reach the clippers on the highest checkpoints where the wind was so strong that the runners were being blown away before they could reach the checkpoint. The trick was to send Andrew to clip the checkpoint sheet whilst Jim got a little head start towards the next one. This route was also modified with a longer descent to the finish. This turned out to be on the path we had rejected during the recce as being too indistinct. All the preceding runners had turned this path into a mud slide and this is where Andrews relatively smooth soled trail shoes gave up with two falls in the final km. Muddy but uninjured, Jim and Andy arrived at the changeover to hand over to Kenny and Eddie for the long climb out of Kinnesswood back to the summit of Bishop Hill, which they reached in an impressive 13 minutes. Thereafter the running was quite good and no problem to the experienced pairing who passed a good number of teams with Kenny particularly strong on the descents. By this time the rain had eased and the skies had cleared but the winds were still storm force.

Chas  on the final descent into Falkland on Leg 4

Chas was safely delivered to the final changeover down in Mapsie Glen and was on his way before much of the support team were able to get to there (due to parking difficulties in Falkland). Chas was well wrapped up for the exposed conditions on the top of East Lomond and thoroughly enjoyed his run, with no slips or falls. A mass of people crowded around the finish line in Falkland to welcome and support (vocally and physically in some cases) the runners charging downhill to the line. We finished in exactly 100th position out of 151 finishers in a time of 4:31:32 (splits Sandy 0:42:58; Jim/Andy 1:40:12; Kenny/Eddie 1:10:50; Chas 0:57:32).

It was only a short walk from the finish to the packed village hall where a selection of soups were being freely dished out (we were too late for the cakes it seems) and the end of another successful (i.e. helicopter and police free) Devil's Burdens. We can't wait until next year. Well done to the team and a huge thanks to Billy and Lorraine for ferrying the runners around and for constant enthusiasm (and bottomless flasks of tea).
Alan