Race is survival of the fittest

AROUND 2,500 runners took to the streets of Edinburgh yesterday for a 10km assault course through the city.

Racing as solo competitors from a series of nine massed starts on The Royal Mile, participants tackled the tough route up, over, down and through the Old Town.

Some of the ten obstacles included a three-metre high straw bale wall, a stair climb to Calton Hill, a climb through a series of wrecked cars, an army assault course, and a Holyrood Park waterslide.

There was also a construction site runners had to navigate, use of Fringe sites and a choice of scrambling over two wooden ramps or crawling through pipes underneath a Land Rover.

The Men's Health Survival of the Fittest is part of a tri-nations series, having already taken place in Cardiff and Nottingham.