Fling Tomorrow

It's my 3rd Montane Highland Fling tomorrow, which means I can stuff my face contiunually with food today and if anyone makes comment I can just mutter something about "carb loading".

I'm feeling pretty good about tomorrow at the moment. I had a deep tissue massage on Monday night, which was a similar experience to the dentists, but has definately eased my right hamstring. I'll not repeat the profanity Lee uttered when he started working on it, needless to say he was amazed at how tight and knotted it was. I went out for a gentle 10k on Tuesday, just to see how it felt, but I was still aware of it, hopefully the rest since then will have helped.

It's an early start tomorrow, will probably have to be up about 04.30am, and I'm working tonight, hopefully I will get away early. Incredibly this year there are 343 runners involved according to the latest update on the website. I have Gaynor, my sister, and Cody the hound supporting me, they're now old hands at it and are pretty good too otherwise they wouldn't be asked back !

My plan tomorrow is to try and run without the added pressure of a watch, so I'm not going to wear one, I'll just pace myself by how I'm feeling and I'll see how I get on. My previous times have been 09:55:44 in 2008 & 10:20:10 in last years disaster. I think this year I'm on good form so secretly am hoping for a pb - sub 8 hrs ? Aye , right !!!!!

Good luck to everyone running tomorrow, I'm off to get my stuff ready ....

Tapering ?

Ran my usual 10 miler tonight from the house, planning to take it easy and looking to do it in about 75mins. It was a pretty chilly night with a stiff easterly breeze which made the last few miles a bit more difficult. I started off in daylight but ended up in the dark - it's not quite as summery as I thought yet.

As usual I got a wee bit carried away and ran it in 72 mins 24s, but felt quite relaxed, the only niggle I have is my cramp prone, right hamstring which is still really tight, but IO have a massage booked for tomorrow night and, whilst it's not much fun, it usually helps.

One more run on Tuesday with the club, then it's the Fling on Saturday. At the moment I'm feeling a lot fitter and much more positive mentally than I was at this time last year so am really looking forward to the big run, I just need to drink more in the opening stages 'cause I aint running the last 36 miles with cramp again this year !!

Glen Tilt

I'm still on holiday so planned to fit in one more long run before the Fling a week on Saturday (yikes!). Graeme gave me a shout as he was keen to get another long day in too before the Maggies Challenge in May so after seeing Monday's forecast, we decided to head for Glen Tilt. I had planned a route that would take us up the Tilt, across to the originally titled Loch Loch, then back to Blair Atholl to the South of the Beinn A'Ghlo massif. A very rough working showed that to be about 30ish miles.

It was a cracking day and we figured that leaving the car at the Loch Moraig car park would mean we could run down the tarred road at the start instead of at the end of the run. The run up Glen Tilt was pleasant and we covered the first 14 miles in little over 2 hours - then we hit a snag.

We needed to cross the River Tilt, but the only bridge was a a wire bridge, which wouldn't be a problem but we had Cody with us. Now he can do cattle grids, but I think wire rope bridges are a bit beyond him, so it wasn't an option, if he'd tried to swim the river at that point he'dve been swept away. We tried to find a suitable place to cross but the river was just too high and fast with all the snow melt, so we opted to just run back down the glen, giving us a 28 mile run.














Cody hogging the limelight, but that's the uncrossable river in the background

As we went Graeme suggested climbing Carn A Chlamain, a munro to the west of the glen. We'd both done it a few times, but he argued it would take us over 30 miles and make the day abit tougher. He was to regret that suggestion later ...














Looking toward the Charn A Chlamain summit

I was struggling to run in the heat so the walk on the climb was welcome, Graeme however was struggling with the climb. We skooted down the land rover track back in to the glen and by Marble Lodge we decided that I should press on, get the car and meet Graeme at the track end. I found the last few miles tough, I was dehydrated, my hamstrings were tight and to top it all off I had to go UP the tarred road we had run down earlier ! Map of the route -



















The dog launched himself into the loch at the car park and didn't want to come out, it looked very tempting. I was glad to get a long run in hot weather before the Fling as that was my first hot run last year and I really struggled. The pace wasn't great 32 miles in 7 hours, but it did include a munro, and I did manage to keep the cramp at bay this time.

My monthly mileage is progressing well, I'm already well over the total for last month (not hard, I know) and I now plan to do a few shorter runs and get a deep massage before the Fling.

Routine Hill Run

On Saturday I did my normal Ballo Hill - Lundie Crags & back run. I had just finished a heavy week's running for me and felt it a bit as the run starts with a climb, and it was a very warm day (is winter over at last ?!) which my body's not yet used to, and complete contrast to the sleet I ran in last time.

The run didn't feel as good as the last one but this time I did the 8 miles in 68mins 45s, so yet more time shaved off again. At least it's going in the right direction.

Highland Training Camp !

I had a few days up north in Aviemore last week, spent a day skiing (there's loads of snow!), did some mountain biking and managed to sneek in a wee run in the Rothiemurchus Forest. It's one of my favourite places on the planet, in amongst all the knarly old Scots Pine. I ran out the new foot / cycle path between Aviemore and Loch Morlich, which is called the "Old Logging Road" and is an excellent feature allowing you to avoid the road, which was extremely busy with ski traffic.

The snow laden Northen Corries of Cairngorm

I then meandered back through the forest, navigating from memory as I didn't have a map. This was a pity because if I could have stayed out longer and extended my run I definately would have. In the end I covered 11.5 miles in a relaxed and very enjoyable 1hr 36min. Here's my route -

The D33side Ultra

Saturday 3 April saw the running of the inaugural 33 miles Deeside Ultra race. The race's website sums the event up thus - "The concept is simple, turn up at the Duthie park car park in Aberdeen and register and run the first section of the Deeside way to Banchory, check in with marshall, turn round and run back. You get water at checkpoint, anything else you need to carry yourself or get from your Mum." Map of the route -

According to the webpage 120 people had entered, and on the day 94 people trapped. Maybe the others were put off by the forecast which was dreadful, but as it turned out we had a cracking day. I wasn't too sure what to wear on the feet and on arriving I met Ian Beattie who assured me that road shoes would be the best choice so I went with that. Wise words as it turned out as there were long stretches on tarmac and my joints don't like that.













After A quick briefing from George (pic above) we were off. Thankfully the route follows the old railway line so was really flat. As usual I ran my own race and didn't bother worrying about the people passing me. Normally I would think I could catch them in the later stages but this race was a bit short for me so I was treating it as a training run, and besides I've never run a marathon and was sure a lot of the other runners would be marathon runners and this wasn't much over that distance so figured they'd be much more acomplished.

I reckoned from my training runs that if I ran at 6 miles an hour I should finish the race in 5hrs 30min so this is what I was aiming for. After a couple of miles Ian Beattie went past me and he though he could finish in 4hrs 30min. I thought that was a bit fast so let him go.

I plodded on keeping the pace easy and went through the 8 mile checkpoint in 64min dead. I fell in with a chap (who I think was Mike Raffan) and his gps told us that we went through 10 miles averaging 7m 25s/ml way faster than the 9min/ml's I had planned.

I reached the half-way checkpoint turning in a surprising 2hrs 9min, glad that I still felt good and hadn't really dropped the pace, but expected to feel it on the way back. This was the first out and back race I had run so it was good to see the other runners as we passed, but all too soon I went past the back markers and was on my own again.

My hamstrings had been tight all day and about 200m from the 25ml check point, bang, I was hit by cramp in the right one. I hobbled to the checkpoint and took on some water, put 2 packets of dioralyte in it and downed it in an effort to get me home. I had been thinking that a sub 4.30 might have been on but the cramp scuppered that.

The last stretch seemed endless, I was running at a pace just slow enough to keep the cramp at bay. Encouragingly the rest of my body and mind seemed that it would be happy to push the pace a bit more but if I wanted to finish I daren't.

With about a mile to go I was joined by local runner Scott Craighead, who'd never run an ultra before but was looking very comfortable. The chat between us took our minds off the never ending finish and we crossed the line together in 4hrs 35min 5s, joint 18th position.


















The finish.

At the finish there was a massive table of very welcome cakes and every finisher recieved a bottle of race beer and a medal - made of chocolate !!



















I was delighted with that run, way faster that I had imagined possible for me, and apart from the cramp felt very comfortable. The leason I learned though was that if running long distances unsupported then I need to drink more, the problem I have though is that I carry everything in a rucksack and my water bottle isn't easily accessable which discourages me from drinking. In future I think I need to wear it in conjunction with a water bottle belt and that may solve the issue, I'll try it out next long training run.

Full results can be found HERE.