Another Challenge

Another Challenge

This year I am the Executive Vice President of the elite club the Buchanan-Smith Harriers. The term elite best describes the small membership rather than the outstanding sporting achievements of its members. The membership requirements are simple enough. First, you have to be a member or friend of the extended B-S family. Second, you have to complete a qualifying race (sanctioned by the membership committee). Third, you have to vow never to take races seriously!

Tomorrow’s event is part of the Harriers’ calendar. It is the

Stirling

University

  orDumyatt (pronounced Dum-eye-at) hill race. The race was created when Ranald Macdonald, a colourful character who still works in the Psychology Department, bet £1 that no member of the University could, without mechanical assistance, do the return trip from the sports pavilion bar to the top of the local hill

Dumyat

in less than an hour. On graduation day 1971 the £1 bet was lost by 3 minutes. The first ‘official’ race was held in 1972 and the event is now held annually on the first or second Wednesday evening in May.

The official hill running classification for the race is AS. The category S denotes “short” – i.e.  less than 6 miles. Regrettably, however, the category A denotes the steepest category – i.e. at least 250 ft of ascent per mile. My cousin

Vernon

(currently club Secretary) tells me that the race is 5 miles with 1250ft of ascent and we should be home just inside the hour. He teaches at the university and his window looks out on

Dumyat

. Therefore I suspect that he’ll have a better idea of the race route than he did on Bennachie when he suggested there was about a mile to go just ten seconds before the finish line appeared!!

Vernon

tells me that there is a lot of local mystique about the hill. Two local lads, Frankie and Johnny, completed the run 100 times in one calendar year on the 17th Dec 1992. They had only done it 50 times by the start of October and they had a mad frenzy to finish before Christmas. It is rumoured that they had to do it three times in one day to finish! At the current time there are only five members of the “100 Club”, although Alex King has done it every year since 2001 (which is particularly impressive as the hill was closed for an extended period during the foot and mouth crisis). 

The local hill running club have a song about the hill, which is sung gustily to the tune of Tom Jones’ Delilah. The chorus goes something like this:

But why, why, why

Dumyat

?
Why, why, why

Dumyat

?
Oh before we contour on to Colsnaur
It’s let’s doDumyat, let’s doDumyat once more

I hope that we are up to a few rounds of it as we cross the finish line.