One of the main tasks for any Shettleston Hill Captain appears early in the running calendar when the last weekend in January usually sees the annual Devil’s Burdens Relay take place in the Lomonds of Fife hills near Falkland. The 2024 event took place a little later on the 3rd February on a bright but chilly morning. Always an eventful day and here is Bill Breckenridge’s report of how it went…
This mass participation event (over 100 teams of 6 runners) is one of the competitive highlights for many club hill runners. It involves a great deal of preparation for hosts Fife AC and any club looking to compete at the sharp end, where route choices and athlete pairings are key. This year the club had a record 5 teams competing, so new boss Ross Cruickshanks had his work cut out to make sure we still had 30 athletes ready at the start line despite the inevitable call offs and reshuffles.
Historically Shettleston have always performed strongly in this event and this edition was no exception with the ladies team taking a magnificent 3rd place (25th overall), less than a minute behind Deeside, with Carnethy taking the win in 3hrs 27 mins.
The strength and depth of women competing for the club recently in the hills has continued to grow and this was reflected in the ladies starting line-up of Heather Simpson, Brogan Wallace, CJ Macphail, Zoe Barber, Tilly Hamilton & Tara Walker. It was great to see Heather, Brogan and Tilly running in the blue and gold for the first time and of course Zoe, back in action after a long period of injury. Congratulations to all of you!
The club even had enough female runners to field a mixed team. Ceana Heron, Myrtle Breckenridge and Bryony McLeod dovetailed, almost seamlessly, with Tj Pringle, Bill ‘half-mast’ Breckenridge and Jamie Sutherland to finish 4thmixed team and 46th overall in 4hrs 3mins
Consistency seemed to be the name of the game for Shettleston with the mens A team and Vet 40 team both finishing 3rd in their category. The A team of Daniel Bradford, Robert Simpson, Fred Davies, Dan Dry, Joe Symonds and Calum Harrington Voght had a cracking race and were actually 2nd club home in 2hrs 55mins. Unfortunately Carnethy were good enough to take both 1st and 2nd places!
There were some debuts of sorts in the vets team with Iain Pender, Matty Low and Luis Eisen making their first appearances in this event for the old farts. They matched up with seasoned campaigners, John Connaghan, Chris Grant-Pantry and Steve Winter to post a very commendable time of 3hrs 24 mins (16th overall).
Ross even had energy left over to make an appearance for the mens B team alongside Andrew Shields. They took over the baton (crumpled bit of soggy paper) from Paul Manson running 1st leg and handed on to new boy Angus Rodney and nearly new boy Donnie Buglass. Harry Pulham brought the team home in style to take 12th place overall in 3hrs 18mins
Thanks to Ross for all his hard work and to the club for paying the entry fees!
Full results here at Fife AC
Thanks to Bill and Paul Manson for the photos.
