Jogscotland

A few of our group had done this race in the past and knew roughly what to expect, but as the organisers say it changes every year. The ethos of the challenge is not only the race distance of 12K but the numerous obstacles thought up by the organisers with a warped sense of humour. The name Ythan comes from the river that runs through the town of Ellon in Aberdeenshire so the river played its part in the many obstacles to overcome.

We started off fairly easily along the river bank on good pathway, soon we were into wooded area and onto forest track, and this is where the fun began. We were climbing over large haystacks, climbing over rope net ladders, crawling through plastic tube tunnels, running (or not) through waist deep mud sections, running up steep muddy banks and wading (twice) through the river itself. Strangely the river section was the best as it washed of all the sticky mud from previous sections.

Then we hit the “sting in the tail”. We could see the finish section coming up with a lot of relief. I started to speed up but a guy running next to me told me the obstacles had not quite finished yet and he was right. The route directed us away from the finish line where we again had haystacks to overcome, dropped down steep bank and then back up to the finish line.