GK Runderings

Today started too early. Specifically, it started with a massive crash outside the window at somewhere around 1am. Normally, I'd have taken some interest in what caused it, but no-one in the room paid it the slightest attention - sleep was far more important! And this was a special night. Since the run for the day actually started at the accommodation, there was no minibus shuttle to get to the start point. We'd therefore been told that we only needed to be ready for a start at 8am - and since we were sleeping in the same place the following night, there was nothing to pack up. 7am alarm! Utter luxury - my alarm time had started with a 5 all week, except for the first day when it was before even that. All this works, of course, unless you are a white van man. I needed to get the van back to Tarbert before the day's run started, and one of the team had kindly offered to drive down with me and pick me up. So my alarm was on for 6am - still an improvement, but everyone else wa...

 Today was originally to be a couple of islands, Harris and Lewis. However, I'd realised there was a bus (pretty much the only one of the day) from Tarbert to Stornoway at 14:30, which gave me a chance to get up and see Andy. So the plan was simple. Leave at 8am, complete the first three stages of the day (34km to Tarbert) in 6.5 hours, and hop on the bus. That ought to be doable, I thought. As usual with the Hebrides, I got it wrong. The first stage, we had been warned, was going to be more bog. There's a thing about bog running - you know that you are going to be ankle deep all day, just like you were yesterday and will be tomorrow. However, there is always the wish to postpone the stage where your feet get wet for the first time for as long as possible. This morning, I didn't last the first km. This was the worst so far. On the side of a heathery hill, with no path in sight and the route given only by the line on your watch (difficult to look at when trying t...

 (With apologies to John Denver) "My bags are packed, my kit check done The feet all taped, my quads are gone My Garmin's got me up at half past five But the dawn is breaking It's early morn, the breakfast's waiting The minibus horn Forty miles of bog and I could die But 10k is all today Ferries don't like wind, they say Harris looks a tricky place to go So I'm heaving on a Calmac Across the sea to Skye and back Oh boy, I hate to go..." We're not short of islands on this trip, as I may have mentioned. But we've suddenly acquired another one. There aren't many people who can claim they've accidentally been to Skye, but that number has just gone up a few. The original plan (see the maps above) was to run 26km to the ferry terminal on Berneray, and then take the ferry to Leverburgh, with another 10k the other side to finish off. However, the wind was forecast to increase around lunchtime, and that ferry is currently running on three engines ou...

After yesterday's fun, we decided that my sitting beside Andy's bed saying "there there, dear" would be about as useful as suntan cream on Barra, and probably annoy the both of us within ten minutes. So Andy decided I ought to go on a little run. Day 2 of Rat Race The Isles is 60km of varied terrain, consisting of bog, road, bog, hill, bog, beach, bog, another hill and more bog. OK, maybe not so varied after all. I did, however, get a rest from the extreme weather and hill conditions of day one - this day was far more in keeping with the sort of running we were more used to. A friend once described my beloved Ford Cortina as "a collection of rust loosely joined by weld". In the same way, the route today went through a landscape covered with water - lakes (lochlans, as I have been told to call them) everywhere to run around, and causeways between the individual islands. It was certainly a landscape I'd never seen before. The bogs, of course, w...

  Path (noun, Scots): A way across ground where someone has been before. This does not suggest there is any sign of this person's travel nor whether they actually made it to the other side or not. Hebridean Way (noun, Scots): A set of such paths joining the bottom to the top of the outer Hebrides. We were advised at the briefing the night before we started to "embrace our bogs". The idea was that we should expect to get wet feet from the word go, and not waste time or energy trying to find dry routes round wet areas because there weren't any. 5 km into day one, the bogs were definitely embracing us. It was the sort of embrace given to you by your two-year-old where the next sentence is "please let go of daddy's windpipe". Winds gusting to fifty knots were not exactly helping the experience. We had started to wonder what sort of event we had taken on. Everything in the islands revolves around the ferry crossing times and we were no different. ...