Competitors in the Vango Scottish Ultra who have suffered a week of wet and windy weather, making it more of a challenge than it perhaps initially seemed. [image courtesy Carl Reavey]
After cancellation of the last day due to atrocious weather the final results of the 2009 Scottish Ultra are: 23.33.36 Andrew Murray, 24.04.15 Rob Holding, 24.43.00 Rick Gannon, 25.18.04 Donnie Campbell, 29.52.56 Michael Evans, 30.18.45 Murray Resinski, 30.38.05 Jo Kilkenny, the only female contestant (Irish), 31.01.10 Jon Williams, 31.04.15 Craig Liddle, 31.44.55 Richard Shaw, 31.52.41 Rob Lewis, 32.43.28 Jas Baillie, 33.58.21 Andy Willday, 35.15.18 Justin McLaurin, 39.32.21 Mark Caddy, 40.32.48 Tony Gilmour. Click here for day to day results
Islay’s Niall Colthart has a report: ‘I have not taken my camera on the hill as there was not a dry part of my kit to put it in. Conditions on the hill have been as bad as I have ever seen them at this time of year. This has led the race route to be constantly amended as we have had to put twice the resources in, in terms of feet on the ground into each section, so where we might have had two hill sections we are doing one with a road section. Sunday’s section passed over the bealach between the Paps in visibility of around 20 metres with winds gusting to around 50kts. One group of five were temperarily disorientated and ended up back at the check point that they had left an hour earlier.
‘One problem that we encountered yesterday quite early on was deteriorating river crossings, with all the major crossings having to be assessed at regular intervals and in some cases manned. By the time Karen Sidall, Phil Briggs and I had swept the runners off the hill last night, we were wading over our waists. ‘Today’s section has been amended to a road run from Loch Tarbert to the Corrievreckan and back. With an eye on the weather, we have amended tomorrow’s section to go out Loch Tarbert to Glenbattrick, then up Evan’s Walk to camp at Corran Sands. The race will be completed with a short run in to the finish on Friday at Jura Distillery. ‘There are currently nineteen runners still going. Retirals have been due mainly to hypothermia, and one broken foot. Cam Carter from Australia in particular found the environmental conditions hard to adjust to, on top of lack of sleep from jet lag.’
