Devil’s Burdens Relay

A very icy morning on Saturday 24 January saw Dundee Road Runners enter 2 teams into the Devil’s Burdens relay race around the Lomond Hills in Fife.

The residents of Falkland must really love this annual event as their picturesque village is reduced to gridlock as over 600 runners descend on the village hall. After registering we went through the yearly ritual of working out the highly complex travel arrangements required to get the runners to & from their start/end points. Because we were heading to the beginning of our leg we missed the start, but this photo shows just some of the runners cresting East Lomond.

Legs 1 & 3 require the runners to be paired up and I was running leg 3 with Andy. The start of the leg has 5 yards of level ground then it’s straight up Bishop Hill for about 20 minutes of quads feeling like they are on fire. The next 6 ½ miles have very little flat bits until the end.

Unflattering photo of me with Andy just behind

The weather was fine with good visibility, but that didn’t stop us missing a checkpoint coming off West Lomond which we had to go back for – doh ! Someone has also tarred the last mile of forestry track which because I was wearing fell shoes, my shins really loved. We finished in 1 hr 20 mi, 3 mins slower than the last time, but the lost checkpoint probably accounted for that.

My mixed team finished 66^th out of 111 teams, the men’s team which was full of strong runners finished 17 minutes infront in 41^st – just shows how many good runners there are out there.

A special well done to Gill Hanlon who ran leg 4 for us, whilst doing a recce run for the 2008 race she went over her ankle which required surgery & pins, she’s had an astonishing recovery.

Results HERE

Am running the WHW training run tomorrow (sunday), which should be around 30 miles, hopefully I won’t suffer any detrimental effects – quads could be sore though.