My first marathon was in 1983. Although it was mostly flat, I concluded it was too far & too long, and thought “I never want to do that again“. So I was a bit surprised, nearly 40 years later, to find myself with 254 other people in clothing & footwear suggesting we were about to start something not only quite long, but also pretty hilly.
With uncanny timing, it looked as if the race was set to involve getting wet & windswept, neatly avoiding the bright and calm weather just twenty four hours earlier. The requirement for full body cover seemed appropriate.
Having thrown in my lot with Julia and Craig, towards the rear of the proceedings, we began at a leisurely place, and filed up towards Caerketton. Sadly, some mental arithmetic and Digby’s lookup table for the cutoff times, meant an increase in speed was called for. But just how fast? How will 328(Scott) & 391(Dougie) fare? Hmmm.*
Most of the outward journey didn’t actually seem too windy, although if you can be assailed by a gale, that’s what happened on top of the Kips. Even this wasn’t too bad, and it was here I bumped into Alistair, my recce’ing buddy. As predicted by Mark H, we arrived 10 minutes earlier than our recce time, and that seemed like a good thing.
The return path involves more cleughs than an Agatha Christie novel. My downhill legs were enjoying heading down to them, including going over the heather, and saying “Hi” to Sandra. However something wasn’t right on the ups, even with wind-assistance. Bell’s Hill was definitely hard work, but then we knew it would be. The slope up Capelaw, making one think home is on the horizon, is where my uphill battery got switched to standby. Based on the output, it would have had trouble getting the Duracell bunny to fart, let alone run.
So now, because the boiler room was cooling down, and with the wind chill, my legs were getting cold. Well, that was a novel feeling, perhaps brought on by running about in hills and getting shot of any body fat. It took me a while to realise I really had to do something about that. Putting on waterproof trousers quickly made an improvement, but Allermuir and Caerketton lay ahead. Fortunately, help was at hand. Alistair had caught up with me. He and a chap from East Lothian generously coaxed me up the remainder of the slopes, where I was relieved to find the downhill legs were still operational.
Thanks to their help, I came in at 4 hrs 20; better than I expected. The experience was both physiologically interesting and disturbing. I knew I hadn’t really done enough long distance training, but had been chewing away at fruit pastilles all the way round. In a situation that’s new to you, it’s hard to appreciate (until it happens), just how quickly things can go from fine to dicey.
Having been fed and warmed up at the finish by Mark & Steph, there weren’t any after effects. Wanting a momento of the run, I made a couple of these 3D printed profiles. If ever you need something to demonstrate the Pentland Skyline is virtually all up or down, this is it. I think I’ll stick to the 5-6 mile XCs from now on.
Pete Cain