The day before …

It’s the Highland Fling tomorrow and I’ll admit to being a little nervous about my first ultra. I have no idea how to pace it so my plan is to walk the uphills, gently jog the flats and downhills and see how I go.

The forecast is for heavy rain in the morning but clearing up later in the day, I would prefer to run in rain than bright sunshine, so hopefully it won’t clear up too much.

We’re heading down to cousin Ian’s house in Kirkintilloch tonight so we don’t have far to go in the morning. He’s also kindly agreed to help with support team duties.

I hope to update with a full race report next week, which with a bit of luck will conclude with me crossing the finish line.

Cairngorms

Yesterday I went up to the Braemar area for a run around the foot of the Southern Cairgorms, an area I know very well, but where I had not been for a while.

I parked at Invereye and ran down past Mar Lodge following the Dee on its north bank for a few miles then head north towards the Sluggan. I can see that the snow is lying to quite a low level, uncharacteristically for this late in April, but I don't plan to go too high. However as I approach the Sluggan I see that on leeward slopes the snow is lying and is a couple of feet deep.















Looking back down the Sluggan.

As I crest the top I see that there is way more snow than I anticipated - this is going to be slow torturous going ! I wade through the snow taking an hour to cover the next 2.5 miles, running's impossible until I'm well down the glen. I'm able to get running through the Clais Fhearnaig then stopped in at Bob Scott's bothy for a quick lunch before heading on to Luibeg.












Climbing up from Luibeg I once again enter the snow which slows me down again. I had planned to turn south and head for White Bridge but the laces on my Salomon trail shoes snapped, if anyone has experienced this they will know what I’m talking about. The lacing system is not straight forward and when not broken works well, but is a nightmare when it breaks.

To cap it off the blue skies disappear and it starts to snow – heavily, so I decide to head for Corrour Bothy to fix the shoe and eat my 2^nd lunch. On my arrival there were 11 people sheltering within but I managed to squeeze into a corner fix the broken shoe and cut the lace on the good shoe and fix that too before it breaks somewhere less convenient.














The path down to White Bridge is a real trackle once I’m out of the snow and my feet have thawed, I have to walk though 5 miles of mud, but I eventually get onto the track and run back to the car through the Linn o’ Dee.

I covered around 31 miles in 7hrs 30 mins, pretty slow, but I take comfort that over 10 of these miles were through snow and mud and slowed me down considerably. This has been a good run and I my legs don’t feel too bad which gives me a bit of confidence for the Highland Fling in a couple of weeks.

Monster Bike and Hike

A couple of Fiona’s team have pulled out of the Monster Challenge leaving them short. I had originally been on standby as a reserve to drive the support vehicle but now I’m roped into doing the full thing. Normally this would have been a good training opportunity for the full WHW but it is only 1 week after the Highland Fling, and my legs could be a little weary. Hopefully I won’t pick up any injuries….

Cateran Trail

After 2 weeks off I run the 11 miles home comfortably and decided to risk a longer run at the weekend. Fiona, my wife, is taking part in the Maggie’s Challenge Monster Bike and Hike on 3 May, (a 31 mile cycle followed by a 43 mile walk) so she and her friend decide that as training they would walk the Cateran Trail from Spittal of Glenshee to Bridge of Cally . I drop them off then drive back down to BoC and run the trail to the lunch hut a couple of miles shy of the Spittal. On the way I'm transformed into a snowman a couple of times by passing flurries but it's blue sky between them. After a quick bite to eat Iran back to BoC and met up with Fiona.

This was the longest run I’ve done to date, 28 miles in 5 hours and still felt fresh, but I’m very conscious the Highland Fling will be twice that. Quads are a bit weary though !