Great day this. Warm though…….said as if now being warm is a problem! It shouldn’t be, but for fell running it can sometimes be too warm. Can’t please everyone!
Still a great day though. I was in two minds whether to run this race or go for the Traprain Law race a bit closer to home. Very glad I chose this one down in the borders of Dumfries and Galloway. Durisdeer the village is beautiful and has a great community. It’s tucked away in a fairly remote feeling corner of Scotland and feels almost forgotten with a little church, resplendent (does this work?) with whopper tombstones, and a small row of houses around a stone war memorial.
The race itself is deceptively hard. I think it’s about 10 miles or so but all on very grassy, rounded, ‘runnable’ hills….think Sedbergh….and if you’ve never been to Sedbergh think of something else, I don’t know what. You find yourself thinking that you should be running faster than you are given the ground. It’s not exactly Langdale-esque terrain! I definitely went off too fast, and was actually leading for a bit (let’s say 500m) before carrying some people off on slightly the wrong line. Whoops! After the first steep hill I firmly wrapped my tits in and by the time the finish line popped up I was staggering in just under the 2 hour mark in 5th place.
Still a great day though. I was in two minds whether to run this race or go for the Traprain Law race a bit closer to home. Very glad I chose this one down in the borders of Dumfries and Galloway. Durisdeer the village is beautiful and has a great community. It’s tucked away in a fairly remote feeling corner of Scotland and feels almost forgotten with a little church, resplendent (does this work?) with whopper tombstones, and a small row of houses around a stone war memorial.
The race itself is deceptively hard. I think it’s about 10 miles or so but all on very grassy, rounded, ‘runnable’ hills….think Sedbergh….and if you’ve never been to Sedbergh think of something else, I don’t know what. You find yourself thinking that you should be running faster than you are given the ground. It’s not exactly Langdale-esque terrain! I definitely went off too fast, and was actually leading for a bit (let’s say 500m) before carrying some people off on slightly the wrong line. Whoops! After the first steep hill I firmly wrapped my tits in and by the time the finish line popped up I was staggering in just under the 2 hour mark in 5th place.
No pictures I’m afraid, unless I can dig out some old ones from races past (here we go…) but yeah, the race is really good, very well organised with great support from the local community (ace cakes and teas at the end) and mountain rescue. If you’ve not done it before I’d recommend it massively. Nice low key, grassroots, ‘this is why we fell run’ style affair. Mega!
It’s easy to imagine how they came up with the name of the race. An old man, probably called Frank, shouted upstairs to his wife who was hard of hearing.
“Duris, deer? What shall we call the hill race?”