Chatelherault Handicap

28th June 2006, Chatelherault Country Park
6 miles, 800ft
Just been to Chatelherault Country Park for the inaugural Westerlands Chatelherault Handicap. A very hilly trail 10km. 18 runners turned up. I managed to clock the fastest time of the night with 43:00. Catriona Miller was fastest lady.

West Highland Way Race

24th June 2006, Milngavie to Fort William
95 miles, 12,000ft
Photos  |  Results  |  Official Website  |  Route Map
Jez Bragg knocks 42 minutes off West Highland Way Record
Jez Bragg of Solihull had a phenomenal run knocking 42 minutes off Wim Epskamp's record set in 2000. Jez finished the 95-mile route from Milngavie to Fort William in a time of 15:44:50.
In 2nd place was Topher Gaylord from California/Italy (16:54:17), and 3rd was Norman McLennan from Orkney (17:42:58). Kate Jenkins was first lady and 4th overall, finishing in 18:32:50.


Thanks to Topher for emailing his race profile:

Black Rock 5

23rd June 2006, Kinghorn, Fife
4.5 miles, 220ft
2006 Results  |  Official Website
A record field of 677 runners. Took it steady to start with this time, and enjoyed reeling folk in for most the race. The run out to the rock was on firm sand, but with a stiff headwind. The run back felt much easier wind-assisted until the final soft section of sand, which sucked the life out of my legs. Had a good battle with Caspian Richards once back on the road, just failing to outsprint him on the 45 degree uphill finish.
First lady Rosie Smith got ahead of me just before Black Rock; opened a gap running through the knee-deep sea water; and pulled away steadily on the return leg to set a new ladies' course record of 25:59.
Ray Ward of HBT won the race overall in 23:13. I finished in around 26:51.

Cort-ma Law

21st June 2006
6 miles, 1700ft
Results  |  Westies Report
The most unbelievably foul weather for mid-summer. Very cold wet and windy. But once you started running it didn't really make any difference. It fact the awful conditions kind of took your mind off things. The race was won by Highland Hillrunner Graeme Campbell. First lady was Jo Whitehead of City of Edinburgh.

Photos courtesy of Charlie Campbell

Glen Rosa Horseshoe

10th June 2006
11.4 miles, 5300ft
Results
A scorcher on Arran!
Carnethy took a clean sweep of 1, 2 and 3 in the men's race - Stewart Whitlie, Es Tresidder and Ronnie Gallagher, with Jill Mykura (also Carnethy) winning the ladies' race.

Photos courtesy of Nick Bulloss

Dumbarton Polaroid 10k

8th June 2006
Results
Far too warm! 3rd race in the Polaroid 10k Series. I found this Dumbarton 10k much tougher than last Thursday at Clydebank. Finished in 36:44. Not helped by the fact that I'd just driven 4 hours back from Barrow-in-Furness to get to there in time. As far as I know, Glen Stewart won the race.

Scolty Hill Race

4th June 2006
4.5 miles, 1300ft
Results
Just been to Banchory today for the Scolty Hill Race, which starts here, and climbs Scolty Hill twice.
In the 2nd counter for the 2006 Scottish Hill Runners Championship, both the men's and ladies' race records were broken. The race was won by Andrew Wright of Cambuslang in a record time of 33:05, knocking 40 seconds off the 2003 Mark Rigby record. Lyn Wilson of Carnethy was first lady in 37:39, missing Tracey Brindley's 2005 record by one second!

Clydebank Polaroid 10k

1st June 2006
Results  |  Bella Photos  |  Orange Photos
Jogged round the Clydebank 10k this evening. 2nd race in the Polaroid 10k Series. Finished in 36:04, a few seconds in front of first lady Lesley Chisholm of Springburn. Robert Gilroy of Cambuslang won the race in 30:34.

Photo credits: David Hall and Bellahouston Road Runners

Scottish Hill Racing

My friend Bill Fisher and I are spending a ridiculous amount of time at the moment on our new project - Scottish Hill Racing. This project aims to capture data on all the main Scottish hill races, with fully indexed linkage between Runners, Clubs and Results.

I prefer to start at the Clubs page to search for people, and to check out how many runners are in each club.

If the club vest you are looking for doesn't exist yet, then look for the club by selecting "View: All Clubs", but you must be careful to wait for the whole page to load first.

You can then click on the Runners for Carnethy, for example, which takes you to the Runners page filtered on Carnethy runners. The runners are sorted so that the fastest runner appears first.

Not surprisingly, Stewart Whitlie appears at the top of the list.

You can then click on one of the Results Icons to see the race results, for example Ben Lomond 2006. The runner's name is highlighted.

You can then check out some of the nearby runners, for example Alasdair Anthony who finished 5th at Ben Lomond 2006.

Another feature is to click Runners on the main menu, to display a paginated list of all runners in the database, sorted with fastest runners first. "Avg %Time" is the average percentage time for each runner compared with the winner's time. So if you win all your races, you stay on 100%. This forms a league table of all the runners in the database so far.

By clicking the "Gender" header on the rightmost column you get the same list but sorted with fastest women first. Also from this page, you can sort on who has run the most races by clicking the "Races Run" sortable header.

You can also filter the Runners page by club, and check out who is the fastest runner in each club, and who has run the most races. I think the "Av %Time" for clubs could be useful for calculating start times for club handicap races.

The website also has some useful Race Details pages, for example Moffat Chase, which gives a route map plus an embedded Google map showing the venue location.

We are also working on a big map showing the venues for the main hill races in Scotland. You can get to the race details by clicking the pinpointer, then clicking the race name.

The database currently contains:

2100+ runners

180+ runner profile photos

235+ clubs

46+ club vests

41 sets of race results (for 2005 and 2006)

~5000 race result records

From the 41 race results in the database so far, only 21% of the 2109 runners have done 3 races or more. And 63% of runners have done only one race.

If the site crashes whilst doing a search, as it sometimes does, just click one of the main menu items again to re-load the page.

Jura Fell Race

27th May 2006
16.3 miles, 9,700ft
Results
Ian Holmes breezed to his 4th Jura victory with a huge 21-minute winning margin. Pretty blustery soggy conditions meant that only the first 6 runners finished inside 4 hours.

Photo credit: Barbara MacLeod