For those of you who are geographically challenged, shame on you! You probably look on this route during your morning cornflakes. So, Sunday saw the annual jaunt up the hills behind Lamlash (Arran you twit).

I don’t think anyone would note this race as a classic or a huge challenge but it has its moments. Getting there is the first task. Being a Sunday, Cal Mac tend to heed the Wee Frees and do as little as possible. Consequently, a 12:30 over with a 16:40 back make things somewhat hectic. Especially with a 7 mile hill race in between. On arrival at Brodick it’s straight onto the local boneshaker and along to Lamlash.

It’s Craggy Island all over again (and I mean that in its nicest possible quaint sense – excuse mixed mataphors). Get changed, line up BANG! We’re off.

21 ish starters. Pre-race favs were 16YO Colin Sturgeon of Girvan and Adam Anderson of Carnethy. I decided to follow closely on Paul Emsley’s heels. Unfortunately, after about 1 mile his heels were decidedly clean. The hill rises to 1300 feet which from a start of 0 feet means that it’s a very respectable climb. We were accompanied by our own fan clubs of 3,000 flies each. Being a beautiful day we all kept to the tradition of sweating profusely which our accompanying fan clubs greatly appreciated. At the top of the hill our fly (sic) clubs gave up and left us to our own miseries.

I think I was at this point 8th or 9th and was still ahead of Tommy Begley of Irvine but within a few hundred yards of the top Tommy (being even more of a downhill expert than me) was flying past through knee high heather. The heather was tough to negotiate but a solid mile of less than solid mud held at a 45 degree angle meant that the majority of the runners spent at least some of the time getting well and truly covered.

A final mile of painful road running saw me arrive on 66:50. I’m happy with that, Colin came home first in just over 50 minutes which means that my % was around 1.33, also 2nd > 50 – not bad for me.

PS. Colin’s prize was a purple umbrella. He was speechless!