Carnethy 5 From Behind
Carnethy 5 – 6 miles, 2500 feet total climb over 5 summits
I’m not a very fast hillrunner and so haven’t really entertained entering such a ‘short’ race as the Carnethy 5, but the opportunity to marshal this came up again. I offered to be tailrunner this year. This was what I ended up doing – so could complete the race without the pressure of worrying about coming last and then on Saturday morning it snowed. It carried on snowing and the conditions were pretty dreadful, so I have done the Carnethy 5 race but can tell you little about it, apart from it was white, very white and quite breezy and that my ski goggles should really have been on my face rather than in my cupboard at home. Snow hurts when it hits your eyeballs at speed.
Still – the weather conditions didn’t deter 499 runners from taking part. A fair number in shorts & vests. Eek! [Possibly only 3 retirals.]
The course records are 46:56 male and 54:20 female, from the last century and 2002. [No idea of the weather.]
This year – in white out conditions the winner, Prasad Prasad, came in in 54:08 with 2nd male at 54:09. Charlotte Morgan was 1st lady at 1:01:30.
I was last over the recently collapsed line in about 2:27:23. This included a bum slide down the side of West Kip. A number of commando rolls, and to finish off a dip in the burn.
Great fun – may offer to do it again, better weather would be nice though.



See more of Matt Curry’s pictures here.