Maddy Moss Hill Race

If it’s Wednesday it must be another Bog & Burn hill race!

After taking part in the Rowallan Rosebowl on Tuesday next night Roddy, Mike and I headed off to the Ochil Hills for the Maddy Moss Hill Race, another in the midweek Bog & Burn Hill Race series.

For Mike and I it was our debut in this race which started in Tillicoutry climbing 760m to Ben Cleuch before returning and covering 10km in all.

Needless to say it was warm and dry with a good path all the way.  It was steep straight from the start and the field spread quickly along the multitude of paths through the gorse before converging on the long, relatively steady ascent to the initial top of Law Hill and the summit of Ben Cleuch.  As has been the case in recent hill races Mike showed his mettle on the ascent gradually pulling away and by the summit I reckon he was about 40 seconds ahead of Roddy and 90 seconds ahead of me.

The descent took a different route and was initially pretty gentle and it took me a while before I caught Roddy and thought it unlikely I’d catch Mike and he’d have his first scalp.

However gradually I could see the gap closing  (and as later confirmed by him) and it looked as if Mike was taking it relatively easy.  He doesn’t like descending but this section was  pretty gentle and easy to get some momentum on without getting out of control. 

So, finally I did catch him,  shortly before the gradient steepend and the path narrowed to the finish.  Although this incentivised Mike to put a bit more effort in the terrain no longer suited him and I finished in 69.38 (42nd), Mike in 70.53 (47th) and Roddy 71.10 (50th) out of 90 entrants.

Thanks to Roddy’s local knowledge it was straight to the Woolpack Inn, only a couple of hynred metres from the finish, still in running kit as we rehydrated with a pint of Northumberland Gold.

Next hill race in the Bog & Burn series is Cairn Table at Muirkirk on 24th July.  An ideal local opportunity for new or occassional Killie hill runners.

Alasdair