Bishop Hill Race Report
Fortunately we had another nice day for Bishop which makes three years running, so I'm sure next year will get back to normal. With no Carnethy 5 this was a first chance for the central belt to get engaged in a wee individual race, so we had 108 start which is great. I like to think it's the great price of a fiver, a cracking wee route, the Lomie welcome, great post race soup and a good post winter social that brings so many folk back.
Gordon Pryde took the chance at registration to issue as many envelopes to members of SHR with their yearly calendar and journal. The journal has some superb articles and notably those highlighting the issues around access giving a fair balance of oversight to the difficulties and problems we need to overcome. For our part we have developed a good relationship with the local farmer who takes the highland cows off the hill for the race and we give him and his wife a couple of bottles of wine. We also have good relations with the farmer whose land the Lomonds of Fife race uses. More booze involved but we are also doing small maintenance projects such as improving some dilapidated stiles over fences. These relatively small gestures go a long way to maintaining good relations for us, as well as fellow runners respecting walkers and the needs of local communities. Hopefully this continues into the future, but I wholeheartedly agree we all have a role to play.
As for the race, first timers Andrew Douglas of the Westies and Heidi Ross of Carnethy comfortably took their £50 first place prizes, with the records remaining intact. Notably Clare Whitehead's 13 year old record hasn't been close to being threatened in the last few years which she must be proud of.
Thanks to everyone for coming along again and we hope to see you at the Lomonds of Fife race in August.
Iain Simpson RO, Lomond Hill Runners
Full results on the SHR results tab
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