I’m in! I’ve got a place in the Ben Nevis Race, the pinnacle of the Scottish hill racing season. I’m excited, yet nauseous.
Category: Running
Ben Nevis race 2010
I’ve entered the Ben Nevis race. That doesn’t mean I’ll get a place. That wasn’t meant to rhyme. I’ve just put an application in the post. Hopefully, the local yobs don’t torch the pillar box containing my neatly folded entry form and cheque tonight, which, in the part of Inverness I live in, is a possibility….
Craig Dunain
Last night was my work’s Christmas bash. No expense spared in this year of recession. To Wetherspoons in Inverness we went for cheap turkey and trimmings, and even cheaper drink. Hence the reason I woke up this morning feeling considerably worse for wear. A run will sort me out, I reasoned. Fresh air, that’s what…
North District Cross Country Championships
Forget the London Marathon or Great North Run, a muddy golf course on the southern fringe of Inverness was the place to be on Saturday. At 2pm sharp (amazingly), with the light already fading, 50 hardy souls – and a similar number of impish Scottish university students – were off, fighting for honours in the North…
Beinn Eighe
Beinn Eighe, Liathach’s next door neighbour, boasts seven summits above 3000ft. I had no intention of visiting them all, not today at least. The two Munros – Ruadh-stac Mor and Spidean Coire nan Clach – would suffice. I ran, which was fine, if not wearisome, until I reached Loch Coire Mhic Fhearchair. A trot became a…
Carn na Saobhaidhe
Carn na Saobhaidhe is a 811-metre Monadhliath Corbett, rising a long, long way from anywhere. Unwilling to face the tedium of walking there and back – a 17-mile roundtrip – I ran, instantly turning a six-hour trudge into a two-and-a-half hour sprint. The bulldozed tracks to the summit are rightly despised by environmentalists and these…
Ben Wyvis
Ben Wyvis, again. Blowing a hooley, again. Eight of us left the car park: five men, one woman and two scrapping dogs, running along the track above Allt a’ Bhealaich Mhoir, before grinding straight up to Wyvis’s south top, An Cabar, ignoring much of the newly-laid path that winds a gentler way up the mountainside. It…
Fyrish
Fyrish is a 453-metre hill overlooking the Cromarty Firth and topped by an 18th century monument, making it a focal point for the Easter Ross community. It is also the venue for an annual hill race, a seven-and-a-half mile jaunt along forest tracks from Evanton. It was hot, still and steep. Vests were off. A mile-and-a-half in, I was happily…
Toll Creagach and Tom a’Choinich
10pm on a Wednesday night, standing on the summit of a Glen Affric mountain: this is how I want my life to be. Running up an easy path from Loch Affric, we gained the flat roof of Tom a’Choinich before dropping down the mountain’s east ridge to the small col between it and Toll Creagach….
Slioch Hill Race
Twelve-and-a-half miles long and with a cumulative ascent of 1,400 metres, the Slioch Horseshoe is a brute of a hill race. Under Mediterranean skies, 50 hardy souls breezed along the banks of the Kinlochewe River and Loch Maree, before hitting the daunting base of Slioch. Much of the grind up the southeastern flank of Sgurr Dubh was unrunnable. The way…
Roineabhal
We We were coasting through South Uist when the car lost power. It just died. Flat battery we thought. But, no. Even with jump leads attached to a Range Rover, car refused to play ball. Ever tried to find a mechanic in the Western Isles on a Sunday morning? Your chances are slim to nil….
Heights of Madness 