{"id":1898,"date":"2015-04-04T15:40:42","date_gmt":"2015-04-04T15:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northumberlandfellrunners.co.uk\/?p=1898"},"modified":"2015-04-04T16:00:04","modified_gmt":"2015-04-04T16:00:04","slug":"birnham-hill-and-deuchary-hill-canter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.northumberlandfellrunners.co.uk\/?p=1898","title":{"rendered":"Highland Boundary Races"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Birnam Hill and Deuchary Hill Canter<\/strong> : Andy Russell<\/p>\n

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Deuchary Hill Canter – photo: Andy<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This year I successfully managed to coordinate a visit to my\u00a0parents\u00a0in Perthshire\u00a0with running in\u00a0two of the three\u00a0Highland Boundary Races held in Birnam and Dunkeld on over the weekend of March 28th & 29th.<\/div>\n
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On the Saturday I lined-up behind 200+ runners for\u00a0the start of\u00a0the\u00a0Birnam Hill Race (6.5km, 535m),\u00a0the first\u00a0Scottish Hill Runners Championship race of the year.\u00a0 After the first 500m on the road,\u00a0the route took us straight on\u00a0to\u00a0the stiff climb\u00a0through the woods. As the gradient eased I tried to coax my legs\u00a0back into action for\u00a0the run across\u00a0the top of Birnam hill which comprised a\u00a0series of small rocky, steps, tree roots and bogs.\u00a0The main descent to the old quarry was mainly via a\u00a0gravelly-trail after which a series of short sharp hills remained before the final steady run down to the finish line.<\/div>\n
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On the Sunday I joined about 60 runners at the Dunkeld Hilton Hotel for the start of the Deuchary Hill Canter (19km, 700m).\u00a0 After an initial stiff climb up to and around the foot of Crag a Barns the route formed a figure of eight along a series of well-defined tracks and trails taking in some excellent views of Strath Tay and the higher snow capped mountains.\u00a0 By the time I’d reached the steep final climb on to Deuchary Hill (509m) and\u00a0my legs were starting to feel it.\u00a0 The route back made for some nice running along grass and mud covered trails with only one small hill to stagger across before the final descent to the finish at the car park near the Cally Sawmill.<\/div>\n
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All in all a very enjoyable weekend of hill running with surprisingly good conditions for the time of year.\u00a0 Many thanks to Adrian Davis and his team for organising two very enjoyable races.<\/div>\n
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Video of the Birnam Hill Race:<\/div>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=djG1kRaurUM
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Photos of the Deuchary Hill Canter:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/47734809@N08\/sets\/72157649350371923\/<\/a><\/div>\n
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Organiser’s report and results here:<\/div>\n
http:\/\/www.shr.uk.com\/NewsItems.aspx?NewsItemID=1752<\/a><\/div>\n
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Andy Russell<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Birnam Hill and Deuchary Hill Canter : Andy Russell This year I successfully managed to coordinate a visit to my\u00a0parents\u00a0in Perthshire\u00a0with running in\u00a0two of the three\u00a0Highland Boundary Races held in Birnam and Dunkeld on over the weekend of March 28th …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northumberlandfellrunners.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northumberlandfellrunners.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northumberlandfellrunners.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northumberlandfellrunners.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northumberlandfellrunners.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1898"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.northumberlandfellrunners.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1906,"href":"http:\/\/www.northumberlandfellrunners.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions\/1906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northumberlandfellrunners.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northumberlandfellrunners.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northumberlandfellrunners.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}