1-24 October - Scotland

Wednesday 1 October – to Perth

I had an appointment at 11am, was home just after noon and we were on the road before half past. With such a late start, it seemed too much of a stretch to think we might make it to Perth, so we decided to aim for somewhere around Moffat. Given the length of hold-ups met in our last few journeys, our journey time expectations were pessimistic, so it was a pleasant surprise to have the smoothest possible journey north. The brakes were barely troubled and by Moffat it had become clear that it wasn’t worth detouring from our route for a good night-spot when we could just continue to Perth.

It had been a tiring day of driving. I had tea on the stove almost as soon as the handbrake was applied, and by 2030 we were in bed.

Thursday 2 to Tuesday 14 October – Newtonmore

Leaving Perth, and with no need to be in Newtonmore at any particular time, I had a little look as to whether we were going to be passing any hills that I could reasonably visit on the way. A 5-mile (each way) detour seemed reasonable, and thus Blath Bhalg was bagged before we tootled onward to Newtonmore.

One of the purposes of this trip was to attend the TGO Challenge Scottish Reunion, after which we were just going to stick around for a few more days before heading off to do some more TGOC-East recces for the rest of the month.

What caused us to stay so long? I think it was mainly that I started making a video for the TGOC YouTube Channel, and year on year I suffer amnesia about quite how long it takes me to make videos. Days were lost staring at a screen and clicking a mouse (not to mention doing fifteen takes of me trying to speak an entire sentence without stumbling over any of the words).

In amongst that I took myself off for an overnight backpack, which turned into rather a hard 35km daywalk with a full pack - probably not an entirely sensible level of exertion so soon after my 24-hour race. 

On 14 October I finally finished the videos I’d been working on and we declared our intention to depart the following day.

Wednesday 15 – Friday 17 October – Around Pitlochry

Wednesday turned out to be a gloriously sunny day from about 11am onwards in the Pitlochry area, which was a bonus for me, as on my agenda was a recce that involved the summit of Ben Vrackie (not a new tick for me as I’d been up there a few years ago).

Leaving Mick in the Visitor Centre car park at Killiecrankie, it was a non-standard route that I took up (i.e. not from the nearest car park) and I only met one couple until the final reaches, when I looked up the stone staircase to see what struck me as a scene from the Hillary Step. I found myself on the summit with 17 other people, although not for long as I continued on away from the crowds to drop off the back side of the hill to make my way over to Shinagag. From there it was a retracing of steps for a while before, in a dereliction of duty, I walked straight past a path I was specifically meant to be looking at (even worse, actually, as my camera records tell me that I stopped and took a photo from the very spot, but looking in the opposite direction). 

22km later, I was back at Bertie having had a fabulous day out in stunning surroundings under a gorgeous sky.

With the day marching on, and unable to spend the night in the Visitor Centre car park, we debated whether to go for a spot that was immediately adjacent to (but not on) the A9 with the road noise that would entail, or whether it was worth a 5-mile detour to the car park we’d used when I’d nipped up the Marilyn of Blath Bhalg on our way north. We opted for the least driving, arrived to find the whole space taken over by Travellers, so we ended up taking the detour, knowing we’d need to come back on ourselves in the morning.

Thursday was another fine day and it started with me being surprised by the health stats on my watch that suggested that I was exhausted or ill and should rest. Feeling fine, I merrily ignored its advice and Mick dropped me in Pitlochry for me to walk to Ballinluig via Loch Broom. Another good outing, at the end of which I met Mick at the Nae Limits Café, before we headed back to the same night-stop – it being on our way to the next day’s recce spot.

Friday was a bad day in many ways. I woke up early feeling very poorly indeed and spent the morning having a close relationship with Bertie’s toilet. I spent the rest of the day in bed, at first freezing, then absolutely roasting. I was in no fit state to even be driven anywhere, and thankfully there was no impediment to staying exactly where we were. I remained a positive radiator of heat for the whole night.

Saturday 18 October to Wednesday 22 - Newtonmore

On Friday evening we had established that not only were all local campsites ridiculously expensive (£42 the cheapest), but they were also fully booked for the weekend with it being Scottish school holidays (I could have got a double room at the Bridge of Cally Hotel for £57!). Involving a bigger diversion off our route than we would have liked, Mick had booked us a Certified Site for a couple of days, where we could hole up whilst I recovered.

However, by Saturday morning it had become clear that I would benefit from some medical attention and the best option seemed to be to backtrack to Newtonmore (known facilities and a house to stay in) rather than diverting to Blairgowrie (unknown facilities and being confined to Bertie).

I spent the next two days in bed, and much of the following two too. By Wednesday I was feeling much better and we were good to resume our travels. (Incidentally, I spent a chunk of one of those days in bed collaborating with ChatGPT to produce some Python scripts and batch files that have automated converting my phone's HEIC files into JPGs, reducing their size by 50% and auto-adding names and captions. It has massively sped up the time it takes me to produce my recce reports.)  

Thursday 23 October - to Braemar

Google Maps told us that our journey to Ballater was going to be longer than usual, due to a closure on the A939 at Bridge of Brown. I checked Aberdeen Council’s road closure page and confirmed that yes, there was indeed a closure notice in place for the whole week, necessitating a 12-mile detour. With time now running out to do the Recces for which we came to Scotland, we weren’t at leisure to delay for another couple of days, so off we went … to find the road wasn’t closed at all.

Two successful recces were conducted (mine was particularly lovely, from Gairnshiel Lodge to Tullochmacarrick) and the only fly in the ointment was that there wasn’t a pitch to be had on the campsite at Ballater, which is where we’d wanted to spend Thursday and Friday nights. Braemar it was instead – just as good a site, but whereas £29 at Ballater buys you a pitch including electricity, at Braemar it’s £29 plus metered electricity.

Friday 24 October - Braemar

That brings us to today, which we allocated as a doing nothing day on the basis of a weather forecast that said that there was a 95% chance of heavy rain continuously from 4am until 10pm. By the time the rain finally started at 4pm, I could have done my next recce route three times over! How annoying!

The consolation prize was that the coffee and cheese scones at The Bothy (café) were both excellent (the tea was just fine too, but the croissant was a touch disappointing – perhaps an error on Mick’s part to order a French item off a Scottish menu?)

Another 24-hour Race

Why?! 

One of my aims at my 24-hour race in June was to beat my Personal Best of 130km. That race turned out to be ridiculously hot, so I moderated my plans and whilst I won the race I didn’t increase my PB.

I had said before, and during, that race that I wasn’t going to do a 24-hour race next year, but with my objective unmet, I resigned myself to having another stab. Then it occurred to me that it would be easier to maintain my fitness and endurance, than to rebuild it next year, which is what saw me enter this event taking place just 3 months later.

Weather

The weather forecast two weeks out was for wall-to-wall sunshine and 18 degrees. By two days out it was wall-to-wall rain. Two hours before the start, we were down to just two hours of rain and one of showers in the afternoon, with a middling probability of a couple of hours of showers overnight.

Given that forecast, we were unlucky with what we actually got. Somehow, with no suggestion of any remarkable windspeeds in the lead up, mid-afternoon the Met Office suddenly issued a severe weather warning for high winds, effective immediately until the early hours of the morning. It was as if someone had said “You do know that it’s jolly windy out there, don’t you?” and the Met Person said “Blimey, best get on and warn people about what’s currently happening!”.

As much as I like hot weather, I have to concede that the wet and windy conditions were more comfortable than 30+ degrees. But, oh, the mud! There were sections of the course that became pure comedy mud-baths, through which slow teetering was the only option. It was going through one of these in the pissing rain in the middle of the night that I suggested to the person slip-sliding next to me that we had made an odd choice of a fun way to spend a Saturday night out!

How it went

I know it sounds silly to say that I ‘only’ managed 120km, but that wasn’t my goal and it feels like I put in an awful lot of effort, and endured some pretty grim weather, only to fail in my objective. Relatively, I did reasonably well, coming 2^nd out of 89 in my age category and 11^th out of 297 solo women, but a good placing also wasn’t my objective.

It would be easy to blame being poorly in the week leading up to the event for my failure, but as I felt fine (if I overlook the persistent indigestion) for the first 10 laps, I really don’t think that was the problem.

It would also be easy to blame the weather – and certainly the solo winners’ distances were down on previous years – but as I was still on target when the sky cleared and the sun came up, I can’t blame that either. 

I think the reality is that I didn’t eat enough, I lost focus on what I was trying to achieve and somehow convinced myself, with 5 hours to go, that I couldn’t fit 3 more laps in when, in reality, I clearly had time (this event works on the basis of ‘if you’ve started you can finish’ on any lap started before the noon cut-off).

It was in Lap 11 that the wheels fell off. I felt awful and really tired. Thank goodness for a woman called Jayne who distracted me nicely, and undoubtedly sped me up, for the second half of the lap.

Somehow between Lap 11 and Lap 12, I spent 2 hours and 14 minutes in camp. How? What was I doing? I know I ate a bowl of porridge and a can of soup, but I cannot now account for the other two hours. And, yes, I felt pretty rough, but that’s hardly surprising in the circumstances, and it wasn’t a good reason not to carry on.

I did eventually drag myself back out, and felt pretty good for the first 4km of Lap 12, but then off came the wheels again. I felt so bad, seemingly unable to maintain a straight line, that I gave serious consideration to declaring myself unfit to continue at the second Marshal Point. I’d heard someone at the water station mention that they had water and sugar and thinking that a bit of pure sugar might sort me out, I continued on, and at the water station I asked if I’d heard correctly. They pointed me to some cups, where I expected to find a few teaspoons of sugar, but instead found four fizzy cola bottles.

I put the first one in my mouth, it tasted absolutely fantastic and before I’d even swallowed it, I felt so very much better, thus demonstrating that the ‘I can’t do this’ was entirely in my head. I stormed down the next hill (the steep one) passing people inching down sideways, and managed a power-march back up the other side (okay, that was more to do with the photographer at the top). The pep in my step lasted for most of the rest of the lap.  

Finishing Lap 12 with an hour still available to get back out for a final lap, I could undoubtedly have managed to equal my PB of 130km, but I couldn’t see the point. I was going to make my right shin worse, and having already had the experience of covering 70k on a painful shin back in June I wasn’t in the market for doing the same again when it wasn’t going to net me even a PB.

So, with time to spare, I called it a day.

In hindsight, it was a sensible decision to stop … it might have even been the right one!

That’s it, I’m done with 24-hour races…

It’s amusing to now read the messages I sent to a friend about 3 hours after the race, in which I was still sure that I wasn’t going to be doing another 24-hour race any time soon.

Three hours later Ali & I were plotting to return next year.

I’ve since decided that I need the opportunity to have two stabs next year (as I’m still convinced that I have 140km in me) so I may well be doing both June and September again. 

Photos:

Lap 1:

Lap 2:

Lap 3:

Above: Lap 4 (Blogger won't let me insert anything above it); Below: Lap 5

Laps 6, 7 and 8 (yep, Blogger won't let me insert text between the next 3 either):

Lap 9:

 I got so very cold on Lap 8 and shivered my way around. 

Lap 10: 

On this lap I set out in a long-sleeved base layer, fleece, two waterproof jackets, hat, gloves and buff. I must have gone 7 or 8k before took off the hat and gloves and opened some zips.  

Lap 11:
 

Final lap, about 2km from the finish, after the weather had belatedly come good