The 41st Yahoo took place on Tuesday 9th December 2025. Results are here and a short report appears below.
The 42nd Yahoo will take place on Tuesday 8th December 2026.
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The Yahoo is weird, odd and ever-so-slightly bizarre. It is Perth Road Runners’ annual handicap race. It was first run in 1983, and its 2024 renewal was the 40th fixture. It is traditionally held in the ten days or so before Christmas, although has occasionally been delayed into the early New Year where necessary. A Christmas race it may be, but some of the most competitive performances from PRRs occur at this race in the final scrap around the North Inch for Yahoo glory.
As a handicap race, it seeks to provide an even contest for all participants, sending more leisurely/stately runners on their way before the later-starting elite athletes. The contest is held over a 9½-mile course around Perth (containing both the climb of Newhouse Road and some infamously steep slopes in Craigie; clink link for more details). The first runner over the line on the North Inch takes the leviathan trophy for which the Yahoo has become famous/notorious (potential winners are advised to bring a wheelbarrow to the event).
A key feature of the Yahoo is that it is held on an evening in December/January; that is, in the dark. This adds an extra dimension to the race. The course nowadays is marked with flour arrows to within an inch of its life (and generously marshalled). Previous course knowledge is invaluable; a recce, at the very least, is a must. It is not a night for standard club kit: runners (absolutely) must wear reflective/hi-viz/day-glo clothing (and ideally some sort of lighting). The ability to run fast when you can’t see where you’re going is particularly useful. Much of the last mile – ie the section heading upriver/North by the Tay on the North Inch – is invariably and especially dark. A full(ish) moon* helps; without one, the pre-placing of head torches under Smeaton’s Bridge is not unknown.
As to the history of the trophy, Club stalwart Neil Muir relates that “the trophy was donated to a group of athletes from Perth Strathtay Harriers alongside a small number of PRRs on a visit to Aschaffenburg [Perth’s twin town in Bavaria, S Germany] in the eighties. The trophy was competed for between the Aschaffenburg athletes and the Perth athletes with the German athletes visiting Perth at a later date. It was then decided that the trophy would become the trophy for the Yahoo. The Yahoo came about as the route was often used by the Harriers as a training route and decided to make it a Christmas club race and called it the Yahoo as a bit of a laugh.” The Yahoo was a Harriers race for many years (as shown here in this photo from 1996), with PRRs invited to compete, until it was effectively handed over to us to run.
A trophy is also awarded to the fastest time recorded over the course by both male and female athletes. Records of course times are not well kept; so far, I’ve struggled to find anything faster than the times posted by James Waldie in the 2022 race (50:49) and Paige Brown in 2024 (64:14) [although the course is now marginally shorter by dint of the newly-introduced and controversial Peri-Peri and Feus Rd Hoarding short-cuts…]
[* if you can see the moon, it’s because the sky is clear. If the sky is clear, it’s because there are no clouds. If there are no clouds (and in the Perth midwinter at night), it’s probably freezing. And that means the race has probably been called off as the course is too icy. The point here? Full(ish) moons at the Yahoo are rare].
Above: scenes from the Yahoo 2022
The handicap itself is always a talking point, as it shapes the final winner and finishing order every bit as much as fine runs from athletes. Until recently, participants were invited to submit estimates of the times they would achieve over the course. However, these estimates inevitably involved a major element of conservative ‘sandbagging’, giving the ‘cautiously’-estimating athlete a rather higher chance of a win. What then emerged was something of an inevitable arms race in which estimates become ever-more ‘tactically wayward’/b*ll*cks. The use of ‘personal estimates’ was eliminated at the 2021 race in favour of a data-based, independent (if such a thing is possible) and mathematical stab at the handicap; that’s how things remain.
Essentially and obviously, the handicapper asks the question “how fast will this runner cover the course on the evening?” for all runners … and then staggers each of their start times, seeking to create a utopia where they all cross the finish line together. But how?
- Previous Yahoo form is the best guide.
- Races across the current season are also very useful (all the better if close to the date of the Yahoo).
- An initial step – especially where data are sparse – is to ask “how fast would this runner cover a flat parkrun today at full tilt?“.
- This time is then extrapolated up to 9.5 miles: this step also features a ‘fade factor’. Athletes known/thought/felt/believed to be better over short distances are assigned a higher fade factor; marathon runners have a lower one. [Mathematicians and number geeks may like to know that this is a power applied to the ratio of the two distances: a very low fade factor would be a power of 1.05; a high fade factor is 1.08 or even 1.09].
- There may then be a slight adjustment (+/- 1 minute max) for the hilly nature of the course; this allows for PRR having both a) runners who regard 30km + 5 Munros as a mere pre-breakfast warm-up and b) those who tremble at crossing railway bridges.
- Finally, the handicapper takes notice of the historic trend mentioned above, ie that it is very tough indeed for a faster runner to work his or her way through the entire field to win the handicap race. To this end, and also to incentivise the club’s top runners to compete, up to another 30 seconds may well be deducted from the handicap for the three or four fastest runners in the field.
- Strava feed is assiduously watched and tracked.
- Note that the handicapper takes note of current form. It may well be that, historically, Athlete X could run much faster than they are currently displaying. Albeit with a margin of security, Athlete X is handicapped relative to their current capacity, not their historic peak.
- Newcomers with little track record (plus long-term PRRs sneakily training ‘on the quiet’) present the greatest danger to even handicapping; an additional burden to account for this uncertainty is increasingly imposed.
- For what it’s worth, this approach resulted in an average difference-from-actual-time of 1’19” across the field of competitors at the 2022 race, 2’02” in 2023 and 2’46” in 2024.
Viewed historically, Yahoo winners (see table below) seldom emerge from the slowest end of the handicap (but did in 2024) and almost never from the fast end: winners typically tend to be saddled with a middling handicap. As mentioned above, they are often new to the race, making it tricky for the handicappers/organisers to assess their likely performance. Once performance capability over the course is known, it is hard to escape the grip of the handicap. Consequently, only one athlete has ever won the handicap trophy twice; for that, you need to look back to E. Hartley in 1993 and 1995!
Winners of all the Yahoo trophies (ie including fastest lady and man) can be viewed here (fifth page down).
Above: Yahoo trophy winners 2024: Mike McConnell (Fastest Man), Jo Brinkman (handicap trophy winner), Paige Brown (Fastest Lady)
Socially, the Yahoo is on the rise. We’re seeking to create more of an after-party (such as is possible on cold, wet December evenings) at race HQ (this being the PRR gazebo/tent pitched on the edge of the North Inch at the race start). Hot chocolate, Christmas goodies and stovies have been on offer since 2022.
Above: Race HQ at Yahoo 2023: starters/finishers, stovie chefs, North Inch marshals and general hangers-around
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The 2025 Yahoo was an odd and extreme one. Normally, if weather is to threaten the race, it’s ice and snow in the frame. Our problem this year was Storm Bran, scheduled to reach its soggy and very gusty peak at almost the exact start time of the Yahoo. This rendered our usual Race HQ on the North Inch both health-and-safety risky and likely to be blown away.
Step forward, Mr Clive Bowman: Membership Officer, Hay Street resident and heroic saviour of the 2025 Yahoo. Clive’s house doubled as Race Kitchen and his garage as Race HQ. This last-minute alteration – decided upon at 11am on race dayy – entailed extending the usual Yahoo course by 600m, with runners heading up Balhousise St to join the traditional course at Florence Place; on their return, they ran past Bell’s to hang a right at the bowls club, finishing up the narrow alley to Hay St and Clive’s garage.
As the wind rose, streets flooded and branches broke, the entrants gathered. 36 runners had registered for a handicap, but only 25 made the start line. With Ann Reed in such sparkling form this season, she ceded her traditional #1 starter spot to Maria Dale. Some 27’30” later, our deemed/assumed fastest runner – Kerr Mackinnon – set off in pursuit of Maria, Ann and the rest of the field. There appeared to be no obvious “bookies’ favourite” this year, all runners seemingly facing a fairly equal handicap (as judged by those who’d actually taken a look at it). This was a year that happily saw the return of Perth Strathtay Harriers to the race, they having been the genesis of the event some 40+ years before.
It was quickly clear that the conditions were (unsurprisingly) having an effect, with most running Yahoo-ists behind the expected schedule. Reports of headtorches approaching Smeaton’s Bridge reached HQ, where it emerged that club newbie Eileen Cooper had moved through half of the field to take the race lead. But there remains a full mile from there to the finish, and word of a close chaser also rapidly reached us. Ronan McDonnell had been in good XC form approaching the race, but had little form over measured/road distances, and that form relative to his handicap became clear as he passed Eileen [just where Florence Place meets the Inch; ie not far from the finish]. At the line, he had opened out a gap of 8″ to take the Yahoo trophy (following his 4th place in 2024). Alan Rigby noisily gasped his way into third, with the ever-consistent Dean Abberley 4th and PSH’s Gregg Parsons in 5th. The harsh conditions meant that only the first four finishers managed to surpass their expected times.
Gregg’s 62:34 was the fastest men’s time of the evening and sees his name added to the Ian Howie trophy. The evening’s fastest two ladies – Keri Weatherhogg and Paige Brown – started together (with Alex Wylie), with Keri moving away – it is reported – on Newhouse Rd. Her 69:38 won her the quaich for the fastest lady.
Full results – see link below. Alas, the awful conditions rather weighed against our having any decent photos this year.
Well done to all runners! A huge thank-you is due to the race HQ volunteers and marshalls who made the event possible. And again, to Clive. Between us, we saw off Storm Bram.
Resources:
2025 – Results – 25 ran
2024 – Results – 30 ran – race report
2023 – Results – 31 ran
2022 – Results – 23 ran
2021 – Results – 31 ran
2020 – not held (COVID-19)
2019 – Results – 22 ran
2018 – Results – 39 ran
2017 – Results – 21 ran
2016 – Results – 38 ran
2015 – Results – 39 ran