Ben Nevis Hillrace, 5 Sep 09

We met up with Bob and Nics to pose a photo for the Aonach Mor uphill race in the Pocket Mountains book. Weather was wet, overcast and low cloud, so even if I'd managed an in-focus photo, it still would be pretty crap. Fortunately I stumbled across Team Cruachan and Philip agreed to allow his photo (that's it on left) to be used in the book - yahoo! - book photos now complete. Onto the race - pretty wet and low cloud persisted all morning and to the start of the race. Folk were deciding whether on not to run in an extra layer - a quick warm up confirmed long sleeves required ! The race was quite tough, ground was a bit slippy, particularly on the downhill. Some folk were taking extra care on the descent, including myself, but I still managed to pass a few. Will Manners (on his first Ben Race) and myself exchanged places a few times, with Will getting the better of me just before the line. I felt I did pretty well (1hr and 50mins), and only 4 minutes slower than last year, which was better than I thought given the conditions. Bob managed just over 2hr on his first time. Results are on the Ben Nevis Hill Race website.