UKH

mountain runner and a person with a true love of the fells/highlands takes bronze in the commonwealths marathon. Incredible.

Great effort. Seems it’s difficult to find news about his performance in amongst all the headlines about Hawkins, as awful as that must have been for him. 

Radio 2 just covered Hawkins’ collapse but no word of teammate Simpson’s bronze.

Brilliant, strong finish from Simpson yes. Shocking response from the race org to Hawkins’ collapse. Thrilled by proxy to have been lapped by him at the xc! Sounds like he’s ok now. 

Yes.

a man who could take the Ben Nevis record I think.

what an athlete

I heard a rumour that Killian Jornet was going to do The Ben this year. I suspect that having lined up with me in the Skyline he'd be keen for a rematch.

I did a bit of googling and Kenny Stuart's marathon pb is about three and a half minutes quicker than Simpson's.

Its a different record now, I think most courses are a lot slower.

Back in the day there were more sheep which meant less grass and also no set course. 

The sheep thing might hold for the lakes but I'm told by old timers that it's the state of the scree that makes the Ben slower now. The top part of the descent used to be a proper scree run and now its big boulders and bare earth. Add in the course changes like the grassy banking being banned and the short cuts being fenced off and your right, it's a different beast.

True, there's very little good scree left in many of the lakes races too.. 

The top part of that descent is scary, you just can't get going.

Are the cut throughs on the lower path still used? You used to be able to cut off a few of the zig zags that saved a few seconds.

All the lower zig zags were fenced off quite recently.

I was talking to Gary Macdonald a few weeks  ago in town about the guy who had beaten Finlay's Cullin record.

was that Killian Jornet?

Gary reckons Dr Wild will get his Skye record back no problem.

your Ben pace is rather impressive Mr Kerr.and getting quicker

It was Uisdean Hawthorn that took the Skye ridge winter record. I think FW still has the summer one.

It was a totally unsubstantiated rumour about Killian coming to do the Ben so who knows?

I'd hope to go a bit quicker in the Ben this year as I've been making steady progress. Didn't do it last year as I felt it was too close to the Skyline.