Saturday saw the 1st race in the 2012 Scottish Ultra Marathon Series, the D33 in Aberdeen. The D33 is a friendly, low key, no frills, race described on the website as:
“No entry conditions apply, if you think you can then enter and do it. If you get half way and find you can’t, phone registration with your race number, tell them you are a loser and take the bus home.
Support, there is none required but if you want your mum to meet you half way with a jam sandwich then thats ok with us.”
The course is a flat scenic route along the deeside way path from Duthie park to Banchory and back. It is an easy to follow path and there are plenty of flapjack wielding marshals on route so the perfect ultra for the hungry or navigationaly challenged.
4 Bellas made the trip up for the race. Jane Galt and Jane Wild running in their 1st and hopefully not last ultra posted excellent times of 5hrs47 and 5hrs24 respectively. However the ladies performance of the day came from Rebecca Johnson who set an eye watering early pace and managed to hold on to finish first lady in a course record of 3hrs59. I failed in my intention to treat the race as a training run for the Highland Fling, what with the incredible support on the course I got a bit excited and ran round in 3hrs53 finishing 4th. Hope I’m not too broken for the fling…
The race also gets top marks for having Brewdog beers at the finish line and some classy medals “hand branded from wood reclaimed from Hurricane Bawbag”.
If you are thinking of dipping your toe into the murky water of Ultras I would highly recommend this race.
Do it.
Report from Grant.
