Happily Ever After
Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running
Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.
Deveron Valley 10k 2025
by Russell Turner - 10:49 on 11 August 2025
Several months back, I noticed that a City Limits wedding gig in deepest rural Aberdeenshire was to take place the night before the Deveron Valley Running Festival in Banff, a mere 30mins away. This seemed like fate, especially after I persuaded (with not too much effort needed) Richard, our keyboards player, to take part too. Better still, as he lives in Buckie, not far along the coast from Banff, I’d have a bed for the night and no need for a Premier Inn – not that there’s one in the vicinity.
Come the day, Richard was recovering from injury and decided a better use of his time was to drive to Edinburgh straight after the gig to begin a short break in Bulgaria. As you do. But he’s a good man and left me the keys to his house, where I enjoyed a surprisingly good night’s sleep before driving to Banff. There, two coaches were employed to ferry 78 10k runners to the start at Eden Castle.
That may conjure up images of a stately home set in rolling parkland; the reality is a small ruined fortification on a T-junction in the middle of nowhere that’s been absorbed by the farm it stands in. Two portaloos were sited on the junction, which immediately attracted a queue, plus a water station intended for half marathon runners who’d set out earlier and were expected to pass at any moment.
Eden Castle
In the meantime, we chatted, stretched, did some warm-up runs and (in my case also) stayed out of the sun in the shadow of a nearby farm building. The day was warm, threatening to become hot, and the last of Storm Floris had faded away, leaving barely a breeze to cool us. The chat revealed that the course was more undulating than I’d expected, with one hill “you’ll definitely walk up”. Not a PB course, then.
The first three half marathon runners were cheered past, moving remarkably quickly considering they’d already covered seven miles and run up a big hill to reach us, after which we set out to follow them. The group ranged from athletes in club vests to portly fun runners. I lurked near the back, waiting to see what kind of pace happened.
The first 5k was all on roads – undulating ones. They weren’t closed, but barely any traffic was in evidence (we’d been told that tractors and combine harvesters were all working elsewhere) and what we did encounter seemed happy to pull in to let us past: 78 runners wouldn’t hold them up for too long. It was rather a contrast with the previous weekend’s city run in York; despite that, I covered that first 5k in roughly the same time.
The second half featured trails, which meant bumpy footpaths and some steeper inclines, which necessitated a brief walk after 6k, then a longer one after descending to cross the River Deveron on the Bridge of Alvah and climbing back up. This was the hill I’d been warned about.
By now I was running solo, apart from the occasional half marathoner sprinting past and a group of 10kers consistently 30secs ahead, so it was good to reach the teeny out-and-back at 8k, obviously there to make up the distance, cross with a few more runners and confirm that there were people behind as well as ahead.
Garmin shows only 7m of ascent for the ninth kilometre, but it felt much harder than the big hill; half of it was walked. Despite that, only a couple of HMers passed me so I can’t have been the only one to find it a challenge. Conversely, the final kilometre, with no rise and just 5m of descent, was the fastest of the day.
My official finish time was 1:03:38 – less that three minutes slower than York over a trickier and hillier route, so I was satisfied with that, 54th out of 78 and a modest wooden medal, courtesy of Deveron Harriers, the organisers. I’m still expecting faster things at Kinloss later this month, though. The day and course obviously suited some people: records were set in male 10k (36:13) and male and female HM (1:13:08 and 1:29:33). The fastest M60 10k was 47:49. The second-slowest 10k was 1:16:49; the final finisher took 1:55:19, which was probably as big an achievement for her as the record-breaking winner’s.
I spent 10mins watching other finishers arrive outside Duff House Rugby Club, where a family fun day was also in evidence, then returned to Richard’s for a shower and the two-hour trip home via Tesco, because domestic duties are never done. This was definitely a one-off, but worth the effort.
There’s no race next weekend, although there’s a 7-mile long run planned for Friday. That will be run at sensible pace. The weekend after that is the Killin 10k, which might be another undulating one. Wish me luck.
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