Petestack Blog

Time for the wee hill running trip I’d promised myself this week, but where to go when all the most attractive rounds I had in mind were looking too big and/or strenuous to be taking on between the Highlander and the Fling? No real need for a decision till yesterday with a couple of days’ rejuvenating cycling (Monday/Tuesday) and a wee trail run (Wednesday) being what my legs, feet and brain seemed best able to agree on as ‘recovery’ but, with my Easter holidays in danger of running out while I quietly went nowhere, the Drumochter Munros finally sold themselves as starting high and being about as runnable as hills get (think straightforward trail running at 3,000 ft and you won’t be far wrong). So that’s where I went, and nearly turned back in disgust after my sensible decision cost me a cracked windscreen (chance stone thrown up by an oncoming car on the A889 to Dalwhinnie) before accepting that snatching defeat from the jaws of defeat (!) would be helping nobody and I might as well get what I’d come for. Which was a 15.4 mile/4,300 ft round of the hills to the west of the pass yesterday afternoon followed by a 16.3 mile/3,500 ft round of the eastern group this morning, with intentional diversions to Mam Ban (which Irvine Butterfield lists as an unofficial Top), Meall a’ Chaorainn (the deleted western top of A’ Bhuidheanach Beag) and some other minor bumps, but an unnecessary encounter with the great rift of Cama’ Choire caused by the kind of lazy navigation (aka running towards Am Meadar in the haze without checking map or compass) I’m (say it quietly!) still sometimes guilty of when running alone in benign conditions. So that’s about 77 miles of off-road running and 40-something of cycling over the past week, and I’m still not sure whether my Fling’s going to be a race or just a big run (a similar dilemma after an 82-mile running week just before the Cateran last year ultimately resulting in something closer to ‘race’), but hoping for one more good hill day before toning things down a bit next week (back at work Tuesday) and taking the same two days’ rest I had before that (NB I’ll be tapering properly for the WHW again). As for the windscreen (my beautiful heated windscreen!), things could be worse at ‘just’ £75 excess for glass, but that’s still £75 to get back to the van I had yesterday morning and I’m not expecting Autoglass till Wednesday because they’ve had to order it specially.