Arthur’s Seat Handicap

A monthly hilly handicap race covering the 7 hills of Holyrood Park.

For Strava users – Find the Segment on Strava – a hilly 376m of climb in a fiercely steep 4.48km

It takes place on the first Monday of every month. Your exact start time depends on your previous results – it is set so that everyone should finish at 1pm.

Contact Jamie (jamie.thin@gmail.com) to be added to the mailing list and receive your time each month. This informal handicap challenge is open to hill runners who can scramble on steep terrain, fastest route involves some steep scrambling but plenty of alternative routes between the summits for anyone who wants less scrambling / rough ground. Recommended for over 18s who can look after themselves. This is a self-timed challenge, you are responsible for your own safety.

If parents or guardians want to introduce their children to the delights of hill running, please take care – this is a short but demanding course with some steep rocky climbs and steep rocky descents. Taking a lead from parkrun advice, any under 11s should stick close to their parent / guardian.

If you’ve not done the route before take your parkrun 5k time and multiply it by 1.8 and that will give a rough guide of your ‘run time’ for this handicap race. If you are doing the handicap for the first time – guesstimate your ‘run time’ and then as we all aim to finish at 1pm – calculate your start time = 1pm – ‘ your run time’. Make sure you wear grippy hill running shoes – studs or grippy trail running shoes.

So if your average parkrun 5k time is 20 mins, a rough estimate of your time for the Arthurs Seat handicap is 36 mins, so your start time will be 1pm – 36 mins = 12:24.

Time your run yourself and email me your run time to get added to the results.

if the timing works out you should finish with the other runners at 1pm and you should see a few other runners on the hill or at the finish

Route Description

Start from the foot of the Radical Road (by the rock on the path opposite the Octagon Hut). The actual route is effectively up to yourself; however you have to reach each of the 7 peaks in this anti-clockwise order:

Salisbury Crags
Arthurs Seat trig point
Nether Hill (aka Lion’s Haunch)
Crow Hill
Dunsapie Crag
Whinny Hill
Haggis Knowe

(In April each year the route is reversed – April Pacidnah !!).

More info and some history

The Arthur’s Seat 7 Summits is possibly Scotland’s best lunchtime handicap race.. and has been going since about 1995, with a more formal structure since May 2006.

On the first Monday of every month, it starts at the boulder opposite Holyrood Palace. A bit of local knowledge is useful, as the route takes a devious route round all 7 summits of Arthur’s Seat: the Crags, the main summit, Nether Hill, Crow Hill, Dunsapie Hill, Whinny Hill and then the last wee one – Haggis Knowe!

Any route between the summits is permitted, and only Gordon Cameron has been brave enough to run the shortest route, straight across a frozen Dunsapie Loch in the big freeze a few years ago! ( not recommended mid-summer!)

This started out in the 1990s as an informal lunchtime run for two HBT stalwarts who worked at Standard Life. It gradually morphed into a monthly handicap race for the then newly formed Standard Life AC running club. Over time, the Standard Lifers picked up a few waifs and strays – other folk who worked locally in central Edinburgh and who regularly trained on Arthur’s Seat.

It’s now a good monthly handicap race with runners from most of the East clubs – HBT, Carnethy, Carnegie, EAC, Portobello, Moorfoots, Corstorphine, Harmeny … even a few orienteers! It’s traditional that the December handicap race ends up in the Holyrood 9a or Kilderkin for a swift pint before returning to work feeling much better!

History of Arthur’s Seat Handicap Race

from the SLAC archives (Bruce Smith / Mike Lamont)

The handicap dates back a fair few years. Rewind to the mid-1990s when a couple of Boggies – Pete Shaw and Andy Wadsworth – were serving time in the SLAC institution. They would go running over Arthur’s Seat, starting at Andy’s gym – the Edinburgh Club off London Road. Bruce joined them, and we would go twice a week, Monday and Thursday I think. The original route was from London Road, over and down Carlton Terrace Brae, through Abbeymount and Croft-an-Righ into the Park. Then up the Radical Road, down to the col, along the wee path (Pipers Walk) to the steps and up the Dasses along the tourist path to the top. Quick breather; down to Dunsapie Loch; over Dunsapie Hill. Over time, this got extended – Whinny Hill, then replacing the Radical Road with Salisbury Crags.

This was largely before widespread e-mail / social media. As went along, we would bump into odd runners here and there, and they joined the handicap bunch. There were guys from Edinburgh Council – Alex McGuire and Sandy Wallace; also from other local offices and universities – the late Martin Hulme was one, Gordon Cameron another; Richard and Cameron from Baillie Gifford (and later Paul Faulkner). All this time, Bruce Smith was constantly recruiting new Standard Lifers.

The run then developed into a regular meet-up at 12:30pm at the foot of the Radical Road every Monday. The trouble was: it wasn’t a hard enough workout for everyone, so to spice it up a bit Bruce decided to set up a monthly Hill Handicap to add to the monthly wooden-spoon road handicap that the club used to do round on the road around Arthur’s Seat.

The original route evolved a bit over time to the Crags, Arthur’s Seat, Dunsapie (via Crow), over Whinny and back to the stone. To give it a more official title for an Edinburgh race, Bruce thought it should have 7 hills, so Nether and Haggis Knowe were added.

Nether and Haggis also added to the fun of route choice, and you’ve always been able to run the hills in whichever order you choose. As the race has gone on, Gordon helped publicise it around Carnethy, and over time a lot of us have drifted away to work elsewhere or have retired, but the handicap seems to keep going. After Bruce Smith left to go work in Glasgow, Mike Lamont kept the Handicap running until he retired and then handed over to Neil McLure.. who handed over to Anthony Hemmings and now Jamie Thin.

The first recorded handicap race was on 4 May 2006 and featured Colwyn Jones, Derek Paton, James Jarvis, Bruce Smith – and Mike Lamont, who won.

Map: http://carnethy.com/club_training_sessions/lunchtime-handicaps/

Older historic results page: http://carnethy.com/category/mon-arthurs-seat-handicaps/

Strava segment: https://www.strava.com/segments/35401201

Cautionary Tale

Ivor couldn’t find the intricate path leading to the scree run and instead forged a new path through the gorse and brambles – not advisable!!.

This might not be a good advert for the handicap race – but a good lesson that it is worth doing a recce beforehand to find the best lines between the hills!!

Photo – Ivor after missing the scree run path through the gorse bushes off Whinny Hill on the Arthur’s Seat 7 hills handicap race, 11 May 2015.

7 Hills of Arthurs Seat hill handicap record times and comparison to Holyrood parkrun

You are competing against the best – Jill Stephen and Stewart Whitlie are past Scottish hill running champions, Eoin Lennon is an Irish international, Dessie Flannagan and Stewart Whitlie have both won medals at the World Masters Mountain Running championships

But how do these record times compare against other running events in Holyrood park?

The 7 hills of Arthurs Seat is 4.48km on single tracks and rocky ground , the Holyrood parkrun is 5km on the tarmac Queen’s Drive road. It is unsurprisingly a bit faster on the road, with less climb – only 1 hill compared to 7 hills !!

Holyrood parkrun records as of Jan 2024:

Men : Andrew Douglas 14:53

Women : Naomi Lang 16:57

so there is a rough multiplier of x1.6 between the parkrun records and the Arthurs seat handicap

Arthurs Seat handicap times are approx 1.6 x parkrun times

as runners get older the multiplier probably increases to about 1.8, as some older folk probably get slower running downhill