Hoka Highland Fling this weekend

Thursday 24th April 2014

The Scottish ultra distance trail championships take place this weekend, incorporated into the ninth running of the HOKA Highland Fling.

The race is held over the 53-mile stretch of Scotland’s iconic long distance trail The West Highland Way trail, from Milngavie a northern Suburb of Glasgow to the beautiful village of Tyndrum in Highland Stirlingshire.

A record entry of over 800 runners has been received, for what has become one of the most popular ultra events in the UK calendar.

A leading contender for the Scottish title looks to be David Gardiner of Kirkintilloch Olympians.

The Scottish 100km international and former 100k champion, showed good current form when a comfortable winner of the recent Dee 33 event. Beacon runners Neil MacNicol, winner of the Jedburgh ultra in November and Dee 33 runner up Mike Raffan (Cosmic) should also figure well.

Contenders, if they have trained well, are Sub 2.30 marathoners, moving up in distance, Stuart Kerr (Kirkintilloch) and Ray Ward (HBT).

Overall they will be pushed by experienced Irish international Dan Doherty and Centurion Runners Paul Navesney from Surrey.

The women’s race looks fairly open with Jo Thom (Edinburgh AC) and Elaine Omand (Dundee RR) with recent victories at Deeside and Jedburgh respectively having shown good recent form at the shorter ultras.

100k internationals Jo Zakrzewski (Dumfries RC) and Issy Knox (HBT) both have plenty of experience of longer events and should feature, too.

The race starts at 6am on Saturday morning and updates will available on the event FACEBOOK page and Twitter feeds @Flingrace ?#flingrace.

Preview from Adrian Stott

Tags: ultradistance