Half Marathon a Month Challenge #35 - Glenntress Trail Half Marathon - November 2016

Glentress Trail Half Marathon - 20th November 2016

In both November 2014 and 2015 (half marathons #11 and #23), Chris and I travelled to Stratford-upon-Avon for the 'Shakespeare' events down there. You could can read about those in previous blog posts should you wish :-)

In 2016 we decided to try somewhere different, and a little closer to home. The Glentress Trail Half Marathon in the border town of Peebles was selected. We had participated in a couple of half marathons previously which had a 'trail' aspect to them (Hadrian's Wall & Perth), but this was the first time we would be running the entire 21.1km on a trail course. We were also to find out that there was even more to the challenge than that, and a big clue was that it was run by a group called High Terrain Events.

As there was a bit of travelling involved to get from Glasgow to Peebles, and because it was also close to Clare's birthday, she and I decided to head down to the Borders the day before the event and take in the town. Chris travelled down on the day of the race, and we were joined by his daughter Robyn, her fiance Alex, and their crazy dog Charlie.

On the day of the race we all met up at the Glentress Peel Visitor Centre in Glentress Forest. In the main this location is used by mountain bikers, and I later found out that two of my brother-in-laws, Neil and Liam, had separately been biking here in the past. The fact that it was a mountain bike course was another clue to what was in store.

The visitor centre was a well set up place and very cosy. Outside though it was very cold , but dry thank goodness. Chris and I were suitably dressed for the occasion.

As we were waiting for the start of the event Clare asked me how long I thought I would be running so she could plan a wee trip back into Peebles. Given the full trail nature of the course I said about 2.5 hours, which I thought was conservative. However, when I was grabbing some pre-race coffees for us all, Clare ended up chatting to another runner who had very recently run a marathon in the Lake District. This runner said that she expected to complete the course in about 3 hours! This turned out to be a wee bit pessimistic on her part, but it did lead to Chris and I re-evaluating our likely finishing times.

Race time finally arrived and although it was a lovely bright day, the temperature was exactly zero degrees C.

We immediately started climbing and then things levelled out a bit at the point in the course where we had to join the proper trail. This was also a major bottleneck and patience was required to file through the narrow gap.

From that point it was climb, climb, and climb again. I wasn't the only competitor to employ a walk run strategy as a result.

As you can see, given the combination of the cold weather and the height of the course, conditions were getting more and more wintry, and difficult. By the time we reached the top of the climb (about half way through the race) it was very snowy and icy.

Later when I checked the elevation details on my Strava app, it had recorded us running at almost 600 metres up. That explained a lot.

With great relief the top of the climb was reached and it was good to see a source of hydration and carbs had been set up for the runners. 

It was then on to the very fast and very steep downhill. In terms of difficulty this was even harder than the climb. Even if you want to take your time it's so steep that you can't help but speed up as you descend. On three occasions I went over on my ankle, although fortunately no major damage was done. 

To give you an idea of the descent I found this video taken by someone doing it on a mountain bike. (The weather was bit better for them I see!)

There was a photographer hanging around the course at various points and I managed to pick up these images which I must credit to Grand Day Out Photography.

It ended up that we both finished the course in under 3 hours, which was not too bad given initial expectations. 


Results:
Chris -  02:43:28
Frank - 02:51:31