Twisted Chicken Run

We’re here, race 6, the last day of the ‘Tour’ we’ve made it, unfortunately Kevin couldn’t make this race, he had a fitness test he had to do and couldn’t get out of it, not through his lack of trying mind you…. This was the race that nobody knew the route, even after discussing it on Friday night where we had come up with 3 different connotations we still weren’t any the wiser.

I’d planned on taking the train up to Ladybank and cycling over to Strathmiglo on the Saturday but having got a call from Iain T, I opted for a lift, reckon he was ‘buttering’ me up to not take the 2 seconds out on him! Arrived at the Village Hall in plenty time to check out the route map, it was ‘nearly’ one of the routes we had discussed but you cut of the main path into a fire break in the forest which I previously ran in one of the Fife AC nightmare races so I knew what to expect in this part.

We started in the field behind the hall at 2pm, and headed up out of the field onto a narrow tarmacked path into the forest between Strathmiglo and Falkland, as soon as we hit the tarmac Iain put the foot down, he was going for it to get the time back on Pete, I was holding my own with Pete up to about the 2 mile point then I really started fading. I’d gone through 1m in 6:30 and 2 in 7:37, mind you this was a typical Fife AC race, we’d climbed from 216ft at the start to 592ft in the space of 1.5miles, even after we came of the steep climb through the forest we were still climbing, and I think we levelled out at about 642ft.

Mile 3 was more downhill and through the firebreak that I knew but Stevie and Bryce had also both caught and passed me by this point. We emerged onto a track just up from the ‘Chicken Farm’ and the pace levelled out here with mile 4 done in 6:34. I was keeping the gap to Stevie the same distance but I wasn’t making any headway, we were running into a stiff breeze though. After some encouragement from Jim Close who was directing everybody back onto the final path I managed to pick up on the downhill’s and I was conscious of Stevie up ahead. As we entered the field and skirted down the edge I could see him finishing and had a quick glance at the watch…….

All I’ll say is I’ve never ran down that field any quicker, I’m now glad I’d recce’d it before we started, rounded the last corner and even managed a sprint to the line, this time I was out of breath….. asked Steven what his time was and I reckoned he’d beaten me by 1 second, never mind. We stayed and cheered on the rest of the runners for a while before heading in for the traditional post race scram – CAKES, you can’t beat Fife AC for this. Probably the reason half us do the series (that and the camaraderie).

The prize giving was quickly on us with the Corstorphine pairing of Chris O’Brien winning it out right, not bad given he finished just in front of me last year, and his club mate Grant Wilkie 2nd. A few of us popped down to the local Inn for a celebratory pint before heading home. Obviously by the time I’m now typing this up, the full results have been posted, in the end I clocked a overall 2:57:02, and the best bit, that was for equal 12th place with Stevie – bonus……