Roger Cox: A race beneath the shadow of the Forth bridges, one of the "best 500 runs in the world," is 25 this year By Roger Cox Published on Sunday 29 April 2012 11:05 I'M a control freak," says John McKay, "and I'm quite happy to be called that in print." To organise something like the AGR Black Rock "5" for the last 21 years, as McKay has done, you'd need to be. One of the most dramatic running races in the Scottish athletics calendar, from a planning point of view it's also a logistical nightmare of the first order. Starting on Kinghorn's Harbour Road, the almost-but-not-quite-five-mile course takes racers down onto the spectacular expanse of Pettycur Sands, around the Black Rock, which sits over a mile from the shore, and then back into town again for a notoriously draining uphill finish. And because the Black Rock spends much of its life underwater, McKay and his team need to know their tide tables inside out to ensure that the runners - yes, even the slowcoaches in fancy dress at the back - are all able to complete the course in safety. Make a mistake in the planning stages, or misjudge what the wind is doing on the day, and the local coastguard crew might have to be called in to fish stray runners out of the Firth of Forth. Fortunately for all concerned, after two decades of organising the event McKay has got all this down to a fine art. To make doubly-sure that his calculations are correct, however, every year he runs the course himself at the first low tide on race day. If he can get safely around the Black Rock in the morning, he knows the competitors should be able to do the same 12 hours later. This year the 53-year-old laboratory manager will be starting his pre-race run at 7:15am. "It's become a superstition for me," he says. I'm on a 21-year string of being there on race morning - I don't want to ever break it. In her book The World's Ultimate Running Races, the globetrotting Scottish long-distance runner Angela Mudge named the Black Rock "5" as one of the best 500 races in the world. Also included in her list: a race along The Great Wall of China, a run up the stairs of the Empire State Building and a gruelling slog across the Sahara Desert. So what makes the Kinghorn run - which marks its 25th anniversary this year - so special? Obviously there's the unique location, with the Forth Bridges providing a stunning backdrop to the action, but for McKay a lot of the event's mystique lies in the mutable nature of the course. "On a big stretch of beach like this, you get ripples in the sand caused by the waves," he says. Those can either be across your path or in line with your path, depending on which way the wind's been blowing, so no two races are the same. And if it's been really calm, the beach will be really flat. The race record was set after one of the stillest nights on record - Ian Harkness in 22 minutes and three seconds. A lot depends on what the wind's doing on the day, too - one year competitors had to run into the teeth of an energy-sapping Force Six. The wind can also affect the tides: "If it's very windy, the tide goes back very slowly on the prevailing wind, the southwesterly," McKay says. Could the faster runners ever have ended up swimming? "It's never been quite as tight as that," he says, "but I have on occasion started the race by announcing to the crowd in front of me, "obey the marshall at the rock" because the tide was still receding." The first Black Rock race took place under the leadership of a chemistry teacher called Brian Hughes. When he was offered a job overseas at short notice, in 1991, he asked McKay if he'd like to take over. With very little time to prepare for that year's event, McKay decided to skip a year, restarting the race in 1992. He has organised it ever since - so successfully, in fact, that numbers have had to be capped at 800 and the event sells out in a matter of hours. The race has even attracted a "very generous" three-year sponsorship deal from oil and gas firm AGR, starting this year. In the end, though, it's a community event, and this, according to McKay, is what makes it truly special. "We get over 70 volunteers, almost to a person Kinghorn people," he says, "and the great thing for me is that they all really want to help. It's a huge effort by the community. The 2012 ARG Black Rock "5" takes place on 4 May at 7.45pm, see www.blackrock5.org; entries are closed for this year. To see a gallery of pictures from the event, visit www.scotsman.com