Monthly archives: September 2014

You always think you are going to get an amazing nights sleep after running a 24hour race, but it never quite works out like that. I can’t move my legs a millimetre in any direction without yelping in pain, so in the absense of sleep i might as well rustle up a race report. It’s around 48hours since i last slept so expect spelling errors, factual innacuracies and flights of fancy. It’s possible none of this actualy happened, but if that is the case i can always play the brain haemorrhage defense trump card. So, Glenmore 24 hour trail race. I won this race back in 2012. It’s the only race i’ve ever won, and that was quite exciting. So when i entered the 2014 race back in november I was hoping the big boys would stay at home and i could win another shiny trophy. I guess like Greig Gleindinning I am a bit of a pot hunter. Although his technique is to find 10k races in obscure borders towns to win, my version is to find stupidly long races where you can win by being the last person to get bored of running around in circles. Well, I jest, you do need a bit of training, but a low boredom threshold will take you a long way in 24 hour racing. In feburary the aforementioned sub arachnoid brain haemorrhage occured (try spelling that after 48 hours with no sleep) which kind of blew a hole in my training. Most of Feburary was spent enjoying the facilities on ward 65 at the Southern General and much of March was spent napping and trying to remember what I’d had for breakfast. By April I had got fed up of googling brain haemorrhage to 5k training plans and started doing a little bit of running, I even ventured out for a few hill races. My lack of fitness was apparent, I could no longer keep up with bella’s resident mountain goat al ewan and had to resort to giving the v60 ladies a run for their money. By may i was back at work and i was running regularly but very slowly. By june most of the fatigue and headaches I had been having were starting to wear off and I was starting to feel like normal. It was at this stage that Glenmore became important to me, i felt that if i had a decent run there it would be the final stage in getting my life fully back to how it was before the brain haemorrhage (end of the serious bit, stay with me there is some toilet stuff coming soon). Over june, july and august i got 3 decent months of training in but that doesnt make very interesting reading so lets just cut to the startline: We are in a field near Aviemore. Its cold and it’s raining and I’m about to spend the next 24hours running laps of a 4 mile trail loop. I’m starting to […]