The Tweed Valley Ultra

 

I had a bit of a debate what to do in November. The Runfurther series was over, but I still wanted one more event this year. I narrowed it down to the Tweed Valley 65k, the Pen Llyn 50 or the White Rose 60.

I've not done much in Scotland, and the Tweed valley is very south Scotland so I thought I'd give it a go.

My original plan had been to head up friday night after work, spend the saturday in the area doing... something, then run sunday and drive home after. I had some gnarly problems booking at the Glentress Peel campsite (if you don't get an answer to emails phone up, and keep phoning until you get hold of someone). Finally, I definitely had a booking for saturday night, so I drove up saturday daytime with a plan to visit Hermitage Castle on the way.

Glentress Peel falafel burger.

Hermitage Castle isn't open in winter. Arse. Because it's in the middle of nowhere I (wrongly) assumed it would be one of those unmanned EH sites.

Oh well. I rolled on to Glentress Peel, arriving around 4.30pm, and registered for Sunday's race, picking up race number, T-shirt, soft cup and a promo nine bar. I had a falafel burger and sweet potato chips (best falafel burger I've ever had, but the sweet potato was a mistake, I don't do well with sweet potatoes) in the Glentress Peel cafe.

A (very) wet saturday night followed, with torrential rain all evening. This was a shame for the people on the night run (a half marathon I think?) who must have had a crappy time. I was very glad to be settled in my camper with a glass of wine, a down duvet and a book (Anna Karenin as it happens, fantastic book).

Breakfast time. Ugh.

5.30am I was wide awake, I think because I'd gone to bed early. So eventually I hauled myself out of bed, ate a little bit of breakfast, had a cup of tea and moved the van down to the event parking.

Early morning people

It was still sort of dark as we all started to mill around the start gate, but not quite dark enough for torches. After a short race briefing we were off at 7.30.

Climbing up through the woods of the mountain bike centre, we zigzagged around a little, before dropping straight back down to the main road on the edge of Peebles and crossing through a tunnel.

Nasty surprise number one: a very long way on tarmac. By my recollection (and I'd have to check my gps trace) it was upwards of 10km. The temptation was to ramp up the pace on this stretch to get the crappy stuff over and done with, and I did give in to that a little. After that the day settled into a bit of a routine. Climb up through woods, zigzag back down along forestry tracks, longish stretch of tarmac. Rinse and repeat.

Thus far the weather had been grey and misty, without any rain to speak of. As we started the long steady climb out of the valley onto Minch Moor, we got fantastic views of temperature inversions everywhere. This was where the front runners on the 50k came ripping past. I was chatting with a couple of people around here, and did the usual 'meet up, lose track, meet up, lose track' for a while. I bagged the trig point by the 3 cairns and dropped back down into the valley.







I think the midpoint checkpoint was at the bottom of this descent. Unfortunately everything they had to eat was carb heavy so I just got water and kept going. I had enough peanut butter to keep me going anyway.

Temperature inversions and spectacular views

Shortly afterwards was another climb up through forestry land. I was criss-crossing with a friendly woman who was maintaining an amazingly consistent pace uphill and down. We ran along together for a while talking about barefoot shoes, then I got ahead coming into the cp. On the last couple of miles she just left me in her dust. More hill reps needed for me I think.

pretty much how I felt

Horses, about a km from the last CP

The last 8 to 10 miles or so were downright grim. First of all we had the boggy, slippery river path from Walkerburn, then back on that tarmac cycle path from the morning. Then finally back up through the woods to the tune of 300m of climb, before dropping down to Glentress Peel again.

Last sharp climb up to the campsite

Lovely volunteers at the end fed me Irn Bru and cheese, and coffee. After compromising my eating habits in the cafe (they'd run out of vegetarian food) I started the long horrid journey home. I'd been up since 5.30, the temperatures were dropping below zero, it was dark and drizzling, and I didn't know the road. It took about a year and a half to get down the A7 to Carlisle, at which point I drank (literally) a litre of coffee in the Costa at the services, and drove at a steady 60 concentrating hard down the M6 to the A65. I particularly hate that stretch of motorway, and I was badly tired.

A very large coffee

The run down the A65 was easy enough though, and I was soon home and settled in with the cat.

Tweed Valley 65? It's a good race, well organised and well attended. But it's even less my kind of thing than the RRR. The 'flat tarmac, hard climb, foresty descent, flat tarmac' theme makes for a tough, demanding race (not least because the tarmac pushes the pace up), but the tarmac just bores me too much.

Next year I might do the Pen Llyn. That looks like more fun, and easier to get home from.