Petestack Blog

It’s a year to the day since my post announcing my withdrawal from the 2009 West Highland Way Race, but it’s not last year now! From December 2008’s write-off to December 2009’s icy trail runs… from spring 2009’s sporadic, ‘pretend’ training to spring 2010’s solid, committed build-up… everything’s quite simply different. Last year the fire just wasn’t there (never really got lit and couldn’t be fed), but this year it’s raging and it’s now or never for that coveted PB because I never want to have to work so obsessively at this again!

So how am I doing, then? Well, having just thrown in a consciously lighter week after feeling tired from three much heftier ones, I’m looking for another solid week plus a lighter one before the Cateran Trail (15 May), then another lighter/heavier pair before thinking about a more sustained taper for the West Highland Way (19 June). So just need to stick to that, watch the weight (doing OK ATM), stay well and uninjured (?) and I’ll have done what I reasonably can…

Thought a proper hill run sounded like a good start to this week, so headed out into the Mamores today with the intention of running Sgurr a’ Mhaim, Stob Ban and Mullach nan Coirean, but conditions were so glorious when I got up there that I just had to take a wee diversion up Am Bodach as well! And the hills just seemed so easy (felt almost like I was floating upwards… to match that paraglider soaring above Sgurr a’ Mhaim?), the Wave Harriers continued to perform impressively enough (got the lacing sorted last night) to have me at the point of ordering a second pair (observant followers of this blog may have noted my predilection for buying running shoes two pairs at a time!) and it was all basically just a magic afternoon out. Although it was a mistake to let curiosity tempt me up the wrong (quickly extinct) path leaving the main Mamore track and I’d have to advise anyone taking that otherwise excellent route up to the ridge to hang on (as I knew I should have done) for the path beyond the bridge.

Also have to make another observation about the ‘Elevation Corrections’ applied to raw GPS data by Garmin Connect, which is to suggest that my suspicions (discussed in my post of 1 April) about their elevation data containing too few points of reference appear to be founded when the ‘corrected’ data for today’s track gives my max elevation as 3,520 ft and I know that Sgurr a’ Mhaim is 3,601 ft high! So my preferred method of cross-checking the recorded ascent/descent is now converting the track to a route (ignoring the shorter distance usually resulting from more straight lines) in Memory-Map and getting it from the route properties, which gives 7,051 ft of ascent and descent (compared to the Forerunner’s 7,150 ft up/7,135 ft down and Garmin Connect’s ‘corrected’ 6,294 ft) for today’s 17.3 mile trip.

One more thing I might mention before hitting that ‘Publish’ button to get this thing online is that I’ve been looking over my 2007 diary to see how this year’s WHW build-up compares, and noted that it was roughly mid-to-late May that year that I started to suffer from the knee problems that continued to plague me for months after the race. So naturally hoping (as I’ve believed for some time) that the magic insoles have got talismanic qualities there and, while it’s clearly not last year now, it’s not 2007 either!