I should be running! Or something like that. (Just can’t afford to pass up the chance of a good workout with the big race in June.)
Having tried several potential partners for some ice climbing today and been unable to sort anything out, I’d thought of a wander up to Polldubh Crags if it stayed dry to solo some old favourites, shunt something new or maybe hook up with some other solitary climber for some routes. But it started raining quite heavily at about 9:30am and I thought that was it for the day. Looks like I missed a trick there because most of the afternoon was fine and sunny, but I’d already made the decision and simply had to get in a decent hill run instead. So I thought about some interesting variations to some of my trade routes before deciding on a big loop taking the Ciaran Path (in much more benign conditions than the previous two weekends) to the Blackwater Dam, continuing over Meall na Cruaidhe to Loch Eilde Mor and adding some further length by returning past the Lodge and TV Mast to finish down the West Highland Way.
And that’s it really. The GPS says I did 14.59 miles in just over 2 hrs 45 mins at an average pace of 11:19 per mile (5.3 mph), which isn’t great but isn’t too bad for the terrain and height gain (allegedly well over 3000 ft!) either. It’s about an hour slower than I’d hope to do a similar distance on roads or even something like the LAC Lairig Mor race (which I’ve done in under 1 hr 49), but mostly much rougher, and the paths through the boggy ground north-east of the Dam are (as demonstrated by the ‘wayward’ track I could have predicted from previous experience) tenuous enough to result in some slow going.
