Post WHW training - Brian

My measly and hardly-worth-mentioning contribution to the Dunbar RC West Highland Way was a very dissapointing 6 miles (achilles pain), though I did manage to add about 3 unintended miles whilst out searching for Jane and Theresa who were doing the 12 mile leg prior to handing over the baton to me........needless to say, their slight deviation from the route resulted in the well-documented and now infamous 'Tyndrum tiff' between Ian and Jane.

Since then i've really not been over the 12 mile mark in training runs, all short and fairly fast stuff, which is good generally but rubbish for marathon training. A foray to Orkney for a holiday saw me suckered into 2 races as part of the 'Stromness Shopping Week' (week-long piss-up), the first was the 'Around the Town' race, 2 miles of fast, steep uphill then descent around the town. The second was the Stromness 10K, which again, was just a bigger version of the 2 miler (ie thru the town, up a big hill then thru the country north of the town and back again. Both lungbusting and eye-poppingly hard.

I managed 3rd and 5th place respectively, let me add that this says rather more about the size of the field than my athletic abilities. Around these two races I managed to get some useful miles accrued running around and between Stenness, Houton and Scorrabrae on the Orkney West Mainland and a nice sharp hill run out towards Ward Hill.

My next run has got to be 14 miles......