If you thought I was mad...

.. for doing my shortest day WHW run in 2006, it was a walk in the park compared to this winter Ramsay round by Shane Ohly.

http://www.runfurther.com/index.php?cPath=658_736

It's a great read and I think any WHW racer with empathise with a phrase that he uses once or twice towards the end - "I just want to f*cking finish!".

Even more amazingly, he's planning on having a crack at a sub-24hr round again this winter in aid of Cancer Research. http://www.justgiving.com/shaneohly



Think I might bung him a pound or two..

A couple of photos

Nothing great though, just done with my aging mobile.


Alasdair & Duncan arriving at Inversnaid


Very slippy point that caused quite a few tumbles.


Some of the many icicles that were hanging off of the rock faces.


The view heading south into the sun.

A fish back in water...

It's hard to express just how good it felt to be back running on the WHW this weekend when I ran with a group from the Drover's Inn at Inverarnan to Inversnaid and back.

It was a gorgeous cold day with snow on the hills, no wind, good company and lots of sunshine. And yet, even without any of those things I think it would have felt good to be back on the WHW running. Suddenly I felt back in my element again and I thoroughly enjoyed the day's running. A fish back in water if you will.

I'm afraid as ever I wasn't as sociable as I could have been but I did enjoy the chatting on the way down with Duncan and others. On the way back I wanted to push on and run at my own pace which meant that I ran most of it on my own. I started several minutes after the lead group and after a long time I eventually caught Caroline (Mrs Pacepusher) who was having a really great run herself. It was great to be running this section on relatively fresh legs and I really enjoy the hopping and skipping around that you need to do to maintain any pace on this section. I don't kid myself that I'll run like that in the race though. ;-)

I wimped out of the longer run and retired after 14 miles, not due to injury or anything but it's my longest run for a while and I didn't want to finish off the run dragging my feet and not enjoying it. One of the other runners (Mandy I think) commented on how important she felt it was to finish a run with positive feelings and I know how those memories help to lift your spirits when you're running the same section but on tired legs in the race. I'm convinced that the good runs I had over the last sections between Kinghouse and Fort William in training this year were a big help in the race. Of course a super-strong tailwind helped too. ;-)

Ankle seems completely recovered although the back still niggles with toothache like pain in my buttocks persisting. As long as it doesn't interfere with my running I can live with it though.

I've decided to have a go at the "100pushups" training plan to do something about my feeble upper body strength. Finished the first week (having started at a lowly "level 2") but flunked the final set of push-ups so I think it might take me longer than the 6 week plan to get fit enough to do my 100 pushups.