Devils Burden Relay 2014

After last years success at the Devil Burden Relay, team captain Roddy Pugh entered a Killie team in this winter relay race of 31km, over 4 legs.

With a number of call offs we had to call on some of our Ayrshire hill running friends to make up our team, so thanks to Tommy Begley, Scott McKendrick and Alasdair McCallum who joined Roddy, Alasdair Murray and David White.

Once again we opted for the early 9.30 start geared for the slower teams.  Leg one, relatively flat over 7.5km,  was run by Alasdair Murray who had a steady run handing over in 3rd place in around 32.30.  The toughest, 2nd leg, was taken on  by Davie and Tommy.  With good visibility, it was only the strong wind and occasional rain that held them back at times, but still they had a great run and navigation completing their leg in around 82 mins and handing over to  Scott in 1st place.

Despite limited training recently and an extremely steep start to the 3rd leg Scott had a great run before handing over to Roddy and Alasdair  McCallum with an extended lead of around 90 seconds.

 

(Scott starts his ascent after starting the 3rd leg in the lead.  On the right, Tommy and Davie finish their descent. )

Roddy and Alasdair held the lead to the final summit of Bishop Hill, however a navigation error to the final checkpoint saw us overtaken and finishing 3rd  of the early starters in 3.18.05, about 7 minutes quicker than last year, and 43rd team of the total 111 finishers.  As we stood at the finishing line, the first finishers from the 10.30 start and overall winners crossed the line, almost one hour ahead of us.  We’ve got a bit more progress to make before next year , even with our guest runners.