So you’re an ‘endurance athlete’ and lean is mean, but it’s not always easy to stay lean and mean when you’re built like a 5’11” brick and naturally greedy! Losing the weight once is easy because a simple rule like just saying no to everything is easy enough to understand, but keeping it all off when you start to realise you can still get away with greed if you’re active enough (to quote John L Parker Jr from Once A Runner, ‘If the furnace is hot enough, it will burn anything’) is much, much harder. (more…)
31 July 2010
26 July 2010
My first and last Ramsay’s Round
Hard to know where to start with this one, so how about a couple of quotes? (more…)
22 July 2010
Ramsay’s Round ‘schedule’
Less than two days to go till Saturday’s Ramsay’s Round attempt and it’s getting difficult to sit and wait, but this week has to work as a ‘mini taper’ if my five-week plan of post-WHW Race recovery, some decent exercise (peaking at a slightly unplanned 68 miles/25,300 ft of proper hill running and some cycling last week!) and some necessary rest is going to come off. Which means nothing more strenuous since Saturday than some walking, an easy 5.4 mile/1,600 ft trail run yesterday and relaxed 20 mile road cycle today despite me pretty well climbing up the walls with that ‘can’t wait’ (don’t wish your life away!) feeling… (more…)
18 July 2010
Loch Treig round
While I couldn’t describe yesterday’s weather as uniformly nice, my round of Loch Treig with Jon was never blighted by quite such foul conditions as Friday’s ascent of Mullach nan Coirean. More of a mixed bag, really, with some pretty stern stuff punctuated by more pleasant interludes when the wind and rain relented, the cloud lifted, the sun broke through and it actually felt good to be out! (more…)
16 July 2010
More wild weather
So the MWIS was threatening ‘gusts as high as 65mph’, ‘significant wind chill’ and ‘bands of constant rain and showers […] focused on more western mountains’, but I really needed to check out Mullach nan Coirean (most westerly of the Mamores) by the northern approach I haven’t taken for years. And the MWIS was pretty well right! (more…)
15 July 2010
Taking the green line
Nearly a fortnight into the school holidays and, after wall-to-wall term-time sunshine through June, we seem to have had little but wind and rain since (sure, I chose to live in Lochaber, but…). So it’s been getting really quite frustrating when I’m wanting to get out for some refamiliarisation with the Grey Corries and Loch Treig peaks but struggling to persuade myself to go charging off on long, remote, solo runs in horrid conditions (although I’ve got a Loch Treig round with Jon pencilled in for the weekend that may have to go ahead regardless). Which makes a great run snatched from the most unpromising of days all the more precious, and that’s exactly what I got when the rain started to look like clearing this afternoon… (more…)
14 July 2010
More thoughts about ‘shortcuts’
While my recent recces with Jon of some suggested ‘shortcuts’ on Na Gruagaichean and the Devil’s Ridge have initially led us in both cases to say ‘that’s worth having’, the maths just doesn’t seem to stack up so well on getting home, analysing the data and considering time saved against time taken. (more…)
13 July 2010
12 July 2010
Bikes, dogs and a Devil’s dram for Dario
Today was important. It’s a year to the day since Dario Melaragni died so suddenly on Lochnagar and, by decree of the Subversive Firefighting Pirate (sorry… forum link now defunct), West Highland Way Race followers everywhere were going to be taking a wee dram in his memory at 8:00pm. Now, I’d decided to take mine at the top of the Devil’s Staircase (scene of my own little memorial run last July), but was also out for a ride on the mountain bike earlier… (more…)
10 July 2010
New tricks for old dogs
With more miserable weather forecast (MWIS threatening 60mph gusts, persistent rain and lightning although the BBC suddenly/mysteriously changed their guess to ‘sunny’ this morning), today didn’t look like a good bet to check out the Loch Treig hills for my Ramsay’s Round. So Jon came down from the Fort to discuss some detailed routing options for the whole round and then (with things looking ever so much better than expected and us thinking we’d maybe missed a trick by not going for Loch Treig) we set out about midday to see what we could still learn about the Mamores after more hill-running days on that ridge than either of us can remember. And here’s what we sought and found (list numbered to match map below)… (more…)