Another week. Bad start, great finish.

Today I enjoyed a great 30 mile run along the WHW from Drymen to Beinglas farm. The forcast had been bad but the weather (until the last few miles) was to bad at all. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

My running weeks started with a failed attempt at a hill run. I'd been helping one of the buidersmove a picinic table in the morning and put my back out. It wasn't *that bd and I was hpeful that it would affect my running too much so I attempted my hill run. I'd barely jogged 10 feet though before I realised that it was a "no-go" situation. Shoooting pains down my legs etc. so that run had to be aborted.

By Tuesday, my back seemed a lot better so I went along to the club to do the session of mile repeats. Seemed to start well but by half I mile I realised that I was going too fast to hope to repeat the same time on my second rep so I eased off a bit. My finishing time was a disappointing 6:17 though and every repeat (just three) got progressively worse. Something clearly wasn't right with me but I thought I'd attempt a easy run the next day to see how that went.

That too turned bad. Within a mile I knew wasn't going to omplete my expected distance (7 miles) and cut is short as soon as practical to about 4 miles. With a 30 mile run planned for the weekend things weren't looking too hopeful!

I rested on thursday and Friday and then consumed far too much red with on Friday night. Feeling decided less than brilliant this morning, I forced down a bowl of cereal and followed that up with some left over chicken curry & rice with peas. Perhaps not a conventional breakfast but I've learned the hard way that you really can't skimp on breakfast if you're planning on a long run.

Met up with JK and another 11 WHWers in the carprk in Drymen. As ever, good to see familiar faces again and at about 9:20, we set off. 200yds up the road I remembered that I'd fogotten to lock my car! After a hasty jog back I spent the next 20 minutes trying to catch up again. Teach me for being so stoopid! ;-)

Not having any ambitions to push the pace I was very happy to bring up the rear with Ellen Thomson and we enjoyed the easy pace. Conic hill was rather breezy and I had to put on my waterproof for a while. The descent of Conic hill was as treacherous and slippery as you'd expect but we made it down safely, catchin Debbie & her support runner Shona on the way down. We then ran together to Rowardennan where we were a bit surprised to find all the rest of the crew having a picnic. Not that we were complainng, it gave us a chance to catch up with the main group. We only stopped to top up our water and I downed my second Mars bar of the day (having eaten my first at Balmaha). Suitably recharged, I found that the easy early pace meant that I could pick up my speed a bit. This proved to be the case for the whole of the rest of the run and I seemd to get faster and faster as the miles passed by. I reached Inversnaid at 2:10. This was quite a shock for me as I felt like I had only been running for about three hours. I paused to take a picture of the river there that was in spate.

JK, IanB, George, Marco & IanK were having another picnic but as I was feeling so good, I decided not to make it too easy for them to catch me so I pressed on, running up many of the hills and generally just loving it.

The solitude, the views & the fine rain falling created a lovely peacefull atmosphere. On top of this I felt like I had bags of energy to finish the run with after my last Mars bar at Inversnaid.

The high water level in Loch Lomond created several challenges, this being one of the wetter ones. ;-)

We'd all long ago given up trying to keep feet dry so it was no hardship just to wade through but by glooy the water was cold! Felt like snow melt!

JK and Marco caught be after about 55 minutes and IanB caught me after about an 1 and a quarter. While I was leading though it felt great to be ahead of JK, even if it wasn't for too long! After running with IanB for a while he made the tactical blunder of stopping for water. After that I'm afraid I legged it, galloping the rest of the way to Beinglas farm.

After a brief photo session with JK, four of us headed off to the Drovers from some well earned fod and drink. They must be used to odd knackered people there as the barman didn't turn a hair at being asked for a pint of milk & a pint of Deuchers. I always crave milk after a long run and I think it helps my recovery. The beer and Aberdeen Angus burger were much appreciated too though. ;-)

All in all, a very pleasing run. My best on so far this season. I think the easy start helped me enormously to finish strong. A couple of days rest no doubt helped too as did the three Mars bars I scoffed. Full marks to JK for organising the transport and enabling us to do a one-way run which is so much more fun than turning back half-way.

Sadly I think I may have to miss the next group run if it's on the 16th of Feb as provisionally planned as I doing the Carnethy 5 an that day