What a busy weekend! Our alarms went off at 5.30am on Saturday – how cruel is that – and we managed to get up less than ten minutes later. I was ready to go at 6.00am, which is what we had decided but of course pacepusher wasn’t – he never is and we were a bit late to pick up John.
We were making our way to Tyndrum for the crazy folk who are doing the West Highland Way race to do a 42 mile run from there to Fort William. I was going along as support for the first time and it was really interesting and great preparation for the actual race day. I don’t really know why I am calling them crazy as those same crazy thoughts do keep running through my head and there are only two reasons why I am holding off – I do not think my knees would hold out and there is no way I could train for it while teaching full time. I might manage the Highland Fling and/or the Devil of the Highlands though!
They set off just before 8am and I was so glad I had asked my dad to come and drive (he is going to do that on the actual day) as I have never driven on single track roads and there were a couple of them. The one to Lundavra in particular was pretty hairy! I am glad I will be running that bit on the day and will not have to be in car.
We went to Bridge of Orchy first, after getting coffees of course, and met with Silke who is absolutely lovely. It’s really interesting meeting new people and hearing different things, I loved hearing about her in-line skating. We then went to Victoria Bridge, Kingshouses (plenty of time for photo’s and coffee there) the bottom of the Devil’s staircase, Kinlochleven (more coffee!), Lundavra and Fort William.
I had books and school work with me and my dad bought a newspaper but we just had a brief look at the newspaper in Lundavra and that was it, as when you are spending time talking to other people the time flies by. We did also keep up with the football scores and I think my dad took a bit of pleasure in telling Marco at Lundavra that it was still 1-0 to Rangers!
I had been out the night before (although only till 9.30pm on a staff night out because of the early start - my colleagues think we are totally loony) and so I did not know which of the many, many bags of Neal’s food and clothes had what in it. I will need to know that for the day. Timings for driving between places etc seem to be fine. The other thing we tried out was mobile phone reception and that was quite rubbish most places so my dad is trying to work out something for that. I think he is getting quite into it as he was talking about getting a bigger zoom for their camera for it, driving the rest of the route to practice and driving me back up to the bits I will run to have a go. He does think everyone is mad though.
Everyone did really well and I was really impressed with how fresh everyone looked throughout (till Lundavra anyway) and how quickly they recovered afterwards. We had to rush off afterwards and I drove back from Tyndrum. It was my first time driving the Loch Lomond road and it was not anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be – although I did not meet any buses coming the opposite way!
We were going for dinner with friends and when we got there I got a belated birthday present and card from them (thanks for the Gore top Crazyboy, Mrs Crazyboy and baby Crazyboy!). The card was written by Crazyboy and I immediately thought that I had to post it on my blog.
A recent study commissioned by the Stefani (aka Crazyboy) institute revealed that 30 year olds ran faster marathons than any other age group, and are also allowed to eat unlimited cake and biscuits. The scientific community have met this claim with scepticism citing some nonsense about a lack of objectivity in the study. Chris Stefani, 30 year old cake and biscuit lover and head of the Institute responded angrily to the scientists criticisms:
“30 year olds rule, FACT! Now leave me alone while I eat my biscuit.!”
There was also a picture but I cannot be bothered to recreate that.
How ironic that my longest post so far has nothing to do with me running!
