Petestack Blog

So we might have had some sustained sunshine through June but, predictably when you’re a school teacher and don’t get on holiday till July, it’s been raining pretty well ever since and windy enough with it at times to make proper hill running a seriously unpleasant prospect (on which note, kudos to the 60+ runners who turned up for the Half Ben on Sunday when I couldn’t even persuade myself to open the door!). But at least I’ve been getting some things done about the house, spending much of the time between Saturday’s soggy cycle to the Dam and today’s run tidying up the bombsite that’s stayed largely untouched through weeks (nay, months!) of WHW Race training and summer term business… (more…)

So let’s get one thing straight right at the start of this post… we’re talking about an absolutely elite hill-running challenge in Ramsay’s Round, and one that’s maybe beyond me even at the top of my game. It’s certainly something I’d regarded firmly as the preserve of altogether better runners before reading a few years ago of Richard Askwith’s long battle with the Bob Graham in Feet in the Clouds. But that got me thinking that maybe these things are just about possible for the more average of us (NB Richard finished immediately behind me in my first Ben Nevis Race) and, despite Ramsay’s generally being regarded as the harder challenge, concluding that perhaps I could do it if he could! (more…)

Some new experiences in WHWR 2010 (not least being overtaken by others late on when no-one’s previously threatened my sense of closing-stage control in my limited ultra career to date), with so much to ponder that all I’m trying to do by blogging it here is to record a series of ‘snapshots’ from along the way. So here we go, more or less in order but neither starting at the start nor attempting to tell the whole story… (more…)

So I wanted an easy hill run for the weekend before the big race, took Irvine Butterfield’s description of Meall Ghaordaidh as ‘quite the dullest hill in the Southern Highlands’ as a cast-iron recommendation and set out to run it this afternoon. (more…)

Hadn’t expected to be heading down the road this weekend, but Ian Beattie’s midweek proposal for a Friday night run from Milngavie to Balmaha was just what I needed three weeks before the West Highland Way Race (did the same with John Kynaston, Joe Sheridan and others at the same stage in 2007) so I arranged to stay Friday and Saturday nights with my parents in Cardross, pencilled in a hill run for the return journey on Sunday and set off after school on Friday. (more…)

Think yesterday (despite being hot with only intermittent cloud cover) was probably the right choice for a meaty hill run because it’s been absolutely bucketing so far this morning! (more…)

So who could describe a 55 mile trail run as ‘an attractive-sounding short ultra’ and how attractive (or short!) might that still be sounding when you’re standing on the start line seven months later? (more…)

So here I am, five miles up some private road up Glen Fyne when I should have been leaving it for the open hill after four-and-a-half max, acutely aware that absolutely nothing squares with my recollection of the map (which I haven’t actually looked at since leaving Kinlochleven). So why didn’t said road start from the east side of the bridge where I parked the van? Why did I run past a fairly substantial lochan when I don’t remember it being marked? And why is this road now taking me steeply and obviously east when I should be leaving it to the west? (more…)

It’s a year to the day since my post announcing my withdrawal from the 2009 West Highland Way Race, but it’s not last year now! From December 2008’s write-off to December 2009’s icy trail runs… from spring 2009’s sporadic, ‘pretend’ training to spring 2010’s solid, committed build-up… everything’s quite simply different. Last year the fire just wasn’t there (never really got lit and couldn’t be fed), but this year it’s raging and it’s now or never for that coveted PB because I never want to have to work so obsessively at this again! (more…)

Not much to say about today, really, but I’ve got another nice 900x900px map to go with yesterday’s and thought I might as well post it. (more…)