60 runners took part in this years Ben Rinnes 5 Tops Hill Race, 14 miles long with 4900' of ascent. My third attempt at this race run from the Dufftown Highland games. The route goes over Little Conval and Meikle Conval before Ben Rinnes, returning to the games field via the same 2 Convals as on the way out.
Cold wet and windy so chose a long sleeved thermal and light shower jacket to keep the wind off. Target was to get as close as possible to 3 hours which was too optimistic with current fitness and in the wet conditions which had turned the Convals a bit mushy.
Kept it steady to start with hopefully conserving energy for the Convals on the way back. Hit the road after the Convals on the way out in 1 hour and then a 47 minute ascent of Ben Rinnes, descent back to the road in 22 mins, finished in 3:13:49, just over a minute down on previous best.
Good race with plenty of runnable terrain but the cold wind/rain combined with the soft ground made it a bit harder this year. The new path up and down Ben Rinnes probably a bit slower as you have to keep to the zig zags to minimise erosion instead of the usual straight down charge.
No comments:
Post a Comment