Colin Kerr Donnelly (born 5 September 1959) is a Scottish runner who was the British
fell running
Fell running, also sometimes known as hill running, is the sport of running and racing, off-road, over upland country where the gradient climbed is a significant component of the difficulty. The name arises from the origins of the English sport o ...
champion three times and finished second in the
World Mountain Running Trophy.
Early life
Donnelly is a son of Raymond Donnelly, a sometime racing cyclist. Colin attended
Eastwood High School, Newton Mearns
Eastwood High School is a comprehensive, non-denominational school located centrally in East Renfrewshire to the south of Glasgow, Scotland. It is one of the successor schools to Eastwood Senior Secondary School which opened in 1936 in Clarksto ...
and was a member of the Cambuslang Harriers.
He showed some talent as a youngster, winning the Galloway and Renfrewshire Schools under-19s cross country championships. His first hill race was at Ben Lomond in 1978. The following year, he won the
Ben Nevis Race and in 1980 finished a close second in the
Three Peaks Race. He graduated in Arts from the University of Aberdeen.
Running career
The peak of Donnelly's running career was in the late 1980s. In 1986 he had another victory at Ben Nevis in one of the fastest times ever recorded for the race. He won the
British Fell Running Championships three consecutive times from 1987 to 1989 and in 1988, he won the
Snowdon Race.
Also in 1988, he set a record for the traverse of the
Welsh 3000s
The Welsh 3000s are the 15 Welsh Munros. These are mountains in Wales that are over . Geographically they fall within three ranges (the Snowdon Massif, the Glyderau, and the Carneddau), but close enough to make it possible to reach all 15 s ...
with a time of 4:19 which stood until 2019 when it was beaten by
Finlay Wild
Finlay Wild (born 8 September 1984) is a Scottish runner and mountaineer who has been a British fell running champion. He has won the Ben Nevis Race twelve times.
Early life and professional career
Wild was born on 8 September 1984 in Thurso.J ...
. Donnelly has also won the
Welsh 1000 m Peaks Race many times.
Donnelly finished second in the short race at the World Mountain Running Trophy in
1989
1989 was a turning point in political history with the "Revolutions of 1989" which ended communism in Eastern Bloc of Europe, starting in Poland and Hungary, with experiments in power-sharing coming to a head with the opening of the Berlin W ...
. As a veteran, he won global titles at the
World Masters Mountain Running Championships in the over-40 category in 2001 and as an over-60 runner in 2019.
He held the course record for the
Buckden Pike Race from 1988 to 2022, and still holds the Shelf Moor Race record, set in 1989. He continued to win races as late as 2017, thirty-eight years after his first Ben Nevis win.
Durham Fell Runners: Cronkley Fell Race 2017 Results.
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He has completed the Bob Graham, Paddy Buckley and Ramsay Rounds, as well as the South Wales 2,000ers.
References
External links
Calum Muskett on Vimeo: Colin Donnelly – Welsh 3000ers record
(not filmed during the record run itself but on the route the following year).
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Donnelly, Colin
1959 births
Living people
People educated at Eastwood High School, Newton Mearns
Alumni of the University of Aberdeen
British fell runners
British male mountain runners
Scottish male long-distance runners
British male long-distance runners
Place of birth missing (living people)
Sportspeople from East Renfrewshire