Petestack Blog

The Coll Half’s never easy. While the island might be low, it’s far from flat and, with one section on sandy track and the virtual certainty of battling the wind somewhere as you run round what can seem like a continuously uphill loop, it’s the hardest/slowest half-marathon course I know. Which might explain why it had been the scene of my three slowest times (1:41:29, 1:42:14 and 1:42:43) anywhere, with 2013’s result now making that four! Except that this one’s different, with 1:39:29 in possibly the hardest conditions yet being not only two minutes less bad than my least bad previous on Coll but my first actual improvement there. Which, being hill-fit but far from road-fast (oops!) after a big summer of hill running and walking but negligible road running or speed work, I could almost convince myself is respectable as ‘equating’ to a good five minutes (or maybe even half-a-minute-per-mile) faster on any ‘normal’ course. So, yep, let’s just pretend it’s respectable and hope for something more respectable again next year!

With thanks for the usual great company from regulars including the Dumfries crowd and Eileen, who took the photo with Keith’s camera.

https://collhalfmarathon.org.uk/half-marathon-2013/

Strange how the Cairngorms have become better known over the past 200 years as ‘blue mountains’ than their older generic name of Am Monadh Ruadh (the red mountain-land) when they’re so clearly coloured by pink granite rather than hazy blue close-up, but (while something’s clearly been lost through the change) who knows… perhaps ‘Cairngorms’ was just easier for visitors? Though, despite being more likely to call them the Cairngorms myself with ‘I’m off to the Monadh Ruadh’ sadly sounding wilfully obscure today, I point-blank refuse to call Sgor an Lochain Uaine ‘The Angel’s Peak’ and now (mindful of the Victorian sanitisation that inspired that particular abomination) find myself increasingly favouring the restoration of Bod an Deamhain over The Devil’s P****!

To get to the point (not P****!), however, I found myself back in the Cairngorms/Monadh Ruadh just three days after getting home from my last visit, but this time with running rather than backpacking on the agenda for a hefty couple of days. And what a joy it was after that (still very satisfying) walking tour to get really moving with minimal gear, covering 27 miles over the hills on Tuesday and 18 yesterday morning…

So Tuesday’s circuit southwards from Braeriach and back over Carn a’ Mhaim and Ben Macdui was devised as a mopping-up exercise to get things previously missed, with Ben Macdui included specifically for my one missing Top of Sron Riach. And yesterday’s morning run up the Bynacks likewise just struck me as a tidy idea, leaving just the western end of the range from Geal-charn to Carn Cloich-mhuilinn to collect another time, with the strange ‘tick’ of Carn Ban Mor there resulting from the 2008 ML Assessment that had also brought me Sgor an Lochain Uaine, Cairn Toul and Bod an Deamhain but awkwardly left me wanting Stob Coire an t-Saighdeir (the Top south of Cairn Toul). And I’m afraid that’s about all I’ve got to say right now when just uploading the map and some photos is going to save me much further agonising over words!

Some fantastically runnable hills yesterday, with the Strathfarrar ridge proving a fast-moving delight despite bringing the rare indignity (outside of race situations!) of being caught by someone who was moving faster than I was…

So I’d come over the Tops of Sgurr Fhuar-thuill and was approaching Sgurr a’ Choire Ghlais at a decent, but not full-on, pace when I became aware of someone coming flying off Creag Ghorm a’ Bhealaich behind me and clearly catching me quite quickly. So (despite logically being outwith a race situation!) I thought waiting on top preferable to getting burned off between peaks, and soon discovered my nemesis to be Graham Dawson, a cheery young doctor from Inverness, who promptly invited me to continue running with him. So off we scurried over the remaining two Munros (my second 992m Carn nan Gobhar of the week + Sgurr na Ruaidhe), with Graham chugging uphill at an impressive rate and showing me up for the lumbering elephant that I am! But, despite perhaps holding him up just a little on this occasion, it seems that we both (as two habitual soloists) welcomed the company, with much enjoyable chat about our common interests in climbing, ultra races and big hill rounds.

To sum up, a good day out with the Strathfarrar ridge (at four Munros and two Tops completed road-to-road in about three-and-a-half hours) not only ticking all the boxes for ‘runnable but not dull’ but proving very much less arduous than its otherwise not dissimilar Mullardoch counterpart! :-)

Not so far from where I’d got to on Saturday, but approached from the opposite direction (Glen Cannich rather than Glen Elchaig), yesterday’s trip along the ridge north of Loch Mullardoch produced the very tidy haul of four Munros, four Tops and four deleted Tops with much very runnable ground before the long, not quite so runnable, return back along the lochside. While the intermittent drizzle and rather more persistent cloud (from which the photos represent rare moments of escape) perhaps weren’t quite as promised by the forecast ‘best day of the week’, the cooler weather at least made for quick, comfortable progress free of the now customary torture by sun, thirst and a thousand clegs!

So what can I say briefly about the day’s four principal summits? While Carn nan Gobhar seems notable mainly for sharing both name and height (992m) with another Munro just eight miles or so to the north-east on the Strathfarrar ridge, Sgurr na Lapaich is a fine, big peak with satellite ridges to north and south and some kind of ruined howff/bothy (see ‘fireplace’ photo) just to the south of its trig point. The crest of An Riabhachan (where I saw the goats that should perhaps have been on Carn nan Gobhar and met a steady stream of walkers who’d mostly taken the boat up Loch Mullardoch) is a hill runner’s dream, but An Socach is quite simply a long way from home with six or seven miles of shore the quickest way back (hence the popularity of the boat). And here, with the low water levels exposing some almost level ‘beach’ below the bigger stones and boulders, I took to the shore and followed that most of the way in preference to the notorious, bracken-compromised path, finding footsteps in the sandier patches to show that I wasn’t the first to think of it!