Dumfries Sports Club

LES HILL of Dumfries Running Club, an experienced ultra runner, did his longest race yet over the weekend of July 12 and 13.

A 24 hours track race where the winner is the person who completes the most laps and therefore the greatest distance.

This event is being introduced as a Commonwealth Championship event in September 2009 and the qualifying distance for selection to the Scottish team has been set at 200 kilometres.

For those who went to school around the same time as Les this is 125 miles in imperial units.

Les thought he was capable of this target, as did the Scottish selectors who encouraged him to have a go at it. Based on his achievements over the last eight years in Ultra events this was a fair assumption to make by both Les and the selectors so he was quietly confident when he started at 10am on Saturday morning of obtaining his goal.

He started at a very conservative pace for him of 10K per hour (in a 10K race he would clock 36 minutes) but pace judgement is paramount to success in any event of a marathon and above.

After one hour he was in 13th place out of 44 competitors but each hour he moved slowly up the order as he continued to run at 10K per hour for 10 hours. At this point he was third equal and only 1.9 miles behind the leader, having completed 100K (62 miles) in 10 hours 3 minutes.

During the last hour of this he developed pains in his right ankle and stopped for a physio massage. Although he lost 30 minutes it seemed to pay off as he was soon back to running at a similar pace to earlier but unfortunately it only lasted a few hours when both ankles started to cause problems.

He found by reverting to walking and jogging his injuries could be managed, until that was his feet blistered badly around sixteen hours. It became apparent to him and his support team of Carolyn Hunter-Rowe and Paul Hart, fellow members of DRC and both experienced ultra runners, that he was not going to achieve the 200K but all agreed he should try to reach the 100 miles mark and then decide whether to push on from there.

The 100 miles was reached in 20 hours 35 minutes and 47 seconds and a few miles further on Les stopped for the medical team to treat his blisters. At this point he had covered 413 laps to record 102.65 miles and was hoping to reach 110 miles after the treatment. Unfortunately while receiving this treatment he became ill and was advised by the doctor not to continue an so with less than three hours to go he retired from the event while in 5th place.

However, the distance he had covered was still good enough to finish 11th and first veteran over 50.

Although disappointed with the result he feels he has learned much from it and is intending having another go at this event in a bid to obtain selection for the Scottish team.

Les said: “This was by far the toughest race I have ever done, even harder than the West highland Way race, and I only got as far as I did with the support of the race organisers but more especially my two DRC club mates – Carolyn and Paul. Without their support I would have given up hours earlier.”

The race was won by Tony Carver of Otley AC who covered an incredible 137 miles.

Dumfries and Galloway Standard