A brief Interlude

So how did I find myself in a hotel in Milngavie, next to a snoring 50 something y.o bloke, trying to get a kip after running 68 miles before starting a 95 mile ultra marathon..

So take us back a little less than a year, when I went to the Post WHW barby at Ian Beatties house.. I walk in and there is this mad bloke who does a semi arms aloft praise you sort of thing and tells me what a great effort my little run to Inverness was and how I was a legend or some such words.. And then he says "So whats next, is it the double"..

Now having just run 168 miles the week before, I guess thinking about doing a 190 mile run was not on the top of my priority list (beer was !) but I had thought about it .. I think about a lot of things .. I tend to think about things then work it out in my head, then talk to a few people and go and do it.. I said to George that I needed a year off after the WHW / Great Glen, but it would be an interesting challenge..

Roll forward a few months. My personal situation has changed significantly, I am living by myself, it is the new year, our very beloved friend has passed away and so I am thinking of not taking a year off, but having a crack at a PB for the WHW. I have had a great winter so far in the snow, am feeling strong after June and reckon I could do ok to get inside 23:12.

George puts a post on the WHW Forum to the effect "I have solved the problem of transport back from Ft William after the race.. Leave your car there, run to the start and then do the return journey " ..

I replied "Interesting"

George goes and does the Way Highland West, me and a few of the gang are out for a wee jolly from Kingshouse to Lairig Mor, meet him in Kinlochlevem and see him on his way south in the dark and the cold and the snow for a cracking 27 hr run..

A few weeks later I was in Aus for my nieces wedding and I sent George an email laying my cards on the table and asking him if he was up for it.. He replied that he was keen to do it but had a few things he needed to sort out first..

And it built from there. March / April we decided to go for it, we both had the same idea about going South then North, agreed on the timescales for the Southern leg.. I said that I would like to keep it a secret as I don't really like all the expectation of these things.. So we sort of agreed that we would just keep it quiet and go and do it..

Then Jez comes up to me at the Fling and says "So I hear that you are planning a little bit of an extra run..." Apparently he was sitting next to some bloke in a restaurant in Milngavie the night before the fling who was drinking Zambucca shots who said he was going to do the double with some Australian bloke..

So what followed was one of the worst kept secrets.. Oh well.. We actually had never ran together before, George is a bit quicker than me and we had never really hooked up on a training run.. Until the Cateran Trail when I spent a cracking 14 hrs in the company of George (and 14 *&(^&&*^*(ing frustrating hours in the company of some other bloke !!) .. we got on, we talked, we thought about things.. We agreed on the goal..

George and I are very different runners, he runs lots of miles, I am minimalist in my training.. But the desire is the same. As we waited in the Travelodge in Milngavie I was on the spare couch, he was snoring on the bed. I was a little bit envious that he could sleep and my head was spinning... I had just spent 18 hrs doing the hardest continuous running of my life.. I was relaxing.. We had taken a hit on the big goal.. We were not going to do the double. As I lay there, I kept thinking that maybe we should have cracked on, had a go.. But I knew we had made the right decision..

We had one goal remaining.. A goblet. We had a cracking support team and I knew that me and George were running well together.. He would not stop until the door of the Lochaber Leisure Centre and neither would I..

So what started at a barby 11 months before had changed a little bit, but thats what its about.. Re-assess, focus and crack on..

At the barby I saw Dario for the last time.. He gave me my goblet, as he has done for so many people. I post this picture again in his memory, a year on from his passing.. There are 2 blokes in this picture. One ran a bit, the other made the run and the dreams possible.. Look how happy he is, his joy at the achievements of others was infectious and that is why we will always remember him..