For fans of Scottish sport, there have been very few reasons to be cheerful in recent weeks. The national football team continues to deliver soul-destroying blows just when they have built up the hope of their supporters, and it remains to be seen how our rugby side (albeit showing signs of improvement) will fare going into the World Cup off the back of a poor record over the last twelve months.

Even Andy Murray, for years now the one consoling glint of light on the world sporting stage for Scots to hang on to, was dumped out of the US Open uncharacteristically early last week.

But despair not Scottish sport fans, because although they may not yet be household names, the guys and girls that will represent the country in Saturday’s World Mountain Running Championship in Snowdonia are amongst the elite athletes in their field.

The likes of Andrew Douglas, current leader in the 2015 Mountain Running World Cup, will compete closely with some of the world’s finest mountain runners for glory over a gruelling 13km course in Betws-y-Coed.

It may not be an obvious sport to get involved in, but Andrew explained how it came to be a passion, and just how good the pedigree of the Scottish athletes currently is.

“For the past two years we have tended to have four or five Scottish athletes in the GB team out of 16 in total, so we usually have good representation,” he said.

“Going on current form we’d be looking at again having four or five athletes in the team for the World Championships.

“In terms of the seniors, myself and Robbie Simpson, who won a silver medal in the European Championships last year, have been at the forefront of the mountain running for the past couple of years.

“I come from a road-running background. One of my big goals in the past few years was to qualify for the marathon in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, but as it turned out, the impact that the training had meant that I kept getting injured and it stalled my progress.

“So I made the switch to off-road running, and I found that I could do the same volume of training, but I wouldn’t pick up the same number of injuries.

“In a typical training week I’d train around thirteen times a week covering upwards of ninety miles.

“That would be a mixture of on-road and off-road running, and track sessions as well.

“I’ve almost got the perfect training venue in the Pentlands. It’s a stone’s throw from where I live, so that’s always been ideal for me.

“It’s a lot of training and you do have to work a lot on your strength for going uphill. It helps to have that base-level speed that I’ve managed to get from road-running and cross-country.

“It’s a different form of racing, especially in terms of the mental side of it. Physically, you still go through the same pain barriers that you go through in road-racing and track-racing, but mentally there’s really no point during a mountain race that you can switch off.

“You’re always having to watch where your footing is going, and you’ve got to be keenly aware of your pacing.

“If you get that wrong, things can go downhill very quickly.

“If you go up too fast then your legs can give way, so it’s trying to push yourself through that pain barrier and just try to get to the top of that hill before anyone else does.”

Douglas is hoping that any success for the Scots in Saturday’s race can increase the ever-growing participation levels further, and he hopes that the sport can attract amateur athletes like those who enjoy events such as Tough Mudder to give mountain running a go.

“Off-road running is growing, because people are beginning to realise what we have on our doorstep, and it’s something that we shouldn’t take for granted,” he said.

“It’s so accessible, you can just head out and train on the hills and take in the stunning scenery that we have in Scotland.

“It’s probably one of the main reasons that I switched to off-road running, just the pure enjoyment that I got from going to different places that you might not even go to unless it was for training. I think that’s been a big pull for people in general that want to join the sport.

“A lot of hill running is kind of like Tough Mudder but you have natural obstacles instead of man-made ones.

“I think people who have found those sorts of challenges fun and enjoyable would really love the challenge of running up a hill.

“There maybe isn’t a lot of publicity behind it at the moment or enough resources put behind it at elite level, but success breeds success, so hopefully the more successful we can be as individuals and as part of a Scottish team, then hopefully we can raise the profile and encourage more people into the sport.”

The success of the Scottish athletes is all the more remarkable when you take into consideration the lack of funding available, meaning that elite level competitors like Douglas have to work their training around full-time jobs.

He said: “Unfortunately there isn’t any kind of funding available, I guess because it’s not seen as an Olympic sport then there’s no lottery funding.

“It’s a bit of a shame because it falls under the bracket of Scottish athletics, but there’s just not any kind of resource given to the hill-running athletes.

“It’s just a case of supporting myself and trying to do the best I can without any funding.

“It is very difficult. You do have to push your body to its limits, both mentally and physically, and then you still have to come into the office and do a job at the same time.

“The way I look at it though is funding or no funding, I want to be the best I can be at the sport, and I’ll keep training as hard as I can within the realms of my abilities.

“In an ideal world where I had funding, maybe I could work part-time and dedicate myself as a full-time athlete, but as it is at the moment I just keep things ticking over and try to make improvements where I can.”