A challenging 10-mile route around Mugdock Country Park.
The startline contained quite a few top class fell runners so I decided to take it steady for the first mile or so, and not get too swept up in the cavalry charge. After half a mile I passed Natalie White and then was joined by Paul Thompson for next couple of miles. After that I pressed on and held position until near the end where I passed Brian McEwan and Dougal Ross at around miles 8 and 9, paced around by a runner in red T-shirt who finished 9th. I finished 10th, about 5 seconds behind this runner - but he strangely doesn't appear in the results. There are a few other anomolies in the results apart from the 9th placed runner not appearing. Duncan McGougan's Turbo X time clearly makes no sense as being 2 minutes faster than British fell running champion Rob Hope, and Dougal Ross's times don't make any sense either.
Having looked at Duncan's splits, it appears clear that he missed the 600m loop between 12.6km and 13.2km, since that would exactly explain how he suddenly gained 3:25 in time, and the cut across to miss that loop was only 30 metres. And I'm guessing Dougal took the same cheeky shortcut since he was over 2 minutes behind me going into the 2.6km Turbo X section, but popped out ahead of me, despite running more slowly!
That said it was a great race and very well marked, along a constantly changing and varied course through woods, trails and bog.
The race was won by Nick Swinburn (who was the fastest through the Turbo X section), followed by Scott Fraser, Ricky Lightfoot, Rob Hope and Murray Strain. In the women's race, Natalie White was a clear winner followed by Emma Birnie and Jacqui Thomson.
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