After the never-ending drizzle that besieged our runners on Stage One, all assembled were hopeful for a drier morning today. Unfortunately, this morning we learned the phrase ‘clagged in’, a word that Scottish people will be familiar with that denotes a day where the air is thick with mist and moisture. The clouds covered the summits and the runners braced for the worst.

Steadily over the day though, that clag burned away and, though temperatures were extremely cold at height, the weather was relatively kind to our athletes.

Stage Two begins with a massive climb, a technical ascent from sea-level to over 400m up what appears to be a cliff face when viewed from camp. That is a taste of what this stage is all about – incredible views as rewards for extremely tough climbs. When not scaling walls, the runners found extremely boggy conditions on the trails along the ridge-lines and plateaus.

Consequently, we have some very tired runners at Kinloch Hourn tonight, but by all accounts they are pulling together, acting as each other’s cheer-leaders and race crew.

No change at the very top of the leaderboard today as the dynamic duo of Axel Jansson and Fredrik Pettersen once again took the win. Will Kerr took 3rd overall today, a big improvement on his 7th-place finish yesterday.

Lauren Gregory was once again the first woman home and took overall again. In similarly similar circumstance Susie Drinkwater was 2nd woman and 8th overall again too. Sarah Scarth was the 3rd woman once again and took 10th.

Simon Harris, Guy Wolverson, and Maria and George Economou, the 4 of whom took a wrong turn earlier in the day and were driven along the course to complete the route from CP2. They’ll drop off the leaderboard, but we wanted them to get the most out of their day in the beautiful West Highland hills.

Stage Three begins at 9:15am tomorrow. There will be 2 routes. Those who reach Mt Barrisdale before 2pm will be allowed to take a high ridgeline route with outstanding views of our Long Beach Camp and the beautiful bay in which Inverie resides. Those who don’t will take the same route back to Inverie that they took out of it on Stage One. Those taking the lower line will be short-course finishers, whilst those on the high line will make up the leaderboard.

Stage Two Results

Overall Results after Stage Two