A week off and a Park Run and then another weekend.

Could you make your titles more prosaic? Well yes actually I could. I could call it "a further four days running, followed by a park run, followed by oh my god my legs are shot."

So I had a day's rest after the 7 hills to recover myself, and then I had the rest of the week off work. On the Tuesday I suddenly formed a desire to get up in the Pentlands which was odd as my hill legs were tired from the race. Peter had hatched a plan to hunt for small pearl bordered fritillaries by wading about in bog and nettles but we agreed to save that treat for the end of the run during which I might join him or poke my eyes out or cut my wrists...or read a book in the car.

It was good to get back to the Pentlands anyhow. I realised I hadn't been round the far-side for quite some time as the high deer-fencing, or whatever it is, is all new to me.

The grasses gave been enjoying the mixture of sun and rain. 

We ran into this dung beetle which kept us entertained for a while.

And then I spotted a frog. I do the spotting and Peter does the handling.

By the end of the run I was out of juice. I knew I would be. Peter went off in search of his PBFs as planned. I followed him a small distance into the nettles and bog and then gave up on it. I didn't want bog stink in my nice hill shoes, which the grasses had just cleaned. Instead I sat on the wooden landing someone has built next to a pond on the red-moss and watched the red damselflies scoot aboot.

Who's this coming out of the bog? Is it a frothing maniac? PB arrived cursing the SPBFs and declaring that they were playing some kind of a trick on him. I think he's had too many tick bites.

The next day I had half a plan to go a small run in the morning and then rest up and maybe do the Meadows 2 mile race at 7pm which was a championship counter. I ran 3 very pleasant miles in the morning and then had a nap and when I woke up nothing in the world would have dragged me up to the hot meadows to try to race. Aileen and Julie - my main rivals - both turned up and ran times that I couldn't have hoped for, so nothing was lost. I was slightly disappointed with myself, but nothing that I can't handle.

The next day we went to Gullane. We saw

birdies

speckled woods

we found a magical glade with

a red admiral the size of a cargo ship just flitting about

there were glamorous skies

and grasses

and a tame little deer

and painted ladies

and then we popped over to Saltoun Big Woods

and the ponds were reflective

and there were plenty of newts

I was so tired after that I nearly died. I know I did something the next day but perhaps cleverly didn't take my camera with me.

Then on Friday night Nick W messaged us to say did we want to go for a park run and then for cake and coffee afterwards? The answer was yes and no. On the one hand, is the pope a bear? Do Catholics shit in the woods? The answer to both questions is "maybe".

To cut a long story short, we did it. I nearly died. I have just today found some photos taken by Chris Pilley and I think you can see that I was very nearly going into the light. One good push and I would have gone. There wasn't much wind and it became very hot. I thought I'd run a substantial season's best but must have just reset my memory cells as it was only a 5s season's best.

nearly

Afterwards I could barely crack 11 minute miles and even cake and coffee couldn't restore my function, so we didn't get far. We went to Cammo but the wee robin was nowhere to be seen and I got a couple of blurred pictures of coal tits which I won't even bother you with.

The next day...I was just running for the sake of it. Me and PB went a run around Arthur's Seat. There is a fair bit of rewilding going on up there and an impressive array of beasties and you only have to stray a little way from the well-beaten paths to get a bit of peace from the continual stream of tourists climbing in lines like ants to the polished summit.

We can get you anything. We can get you;

blues

speckled woods

ringlets

Is it a pearl-bordered fritillary? No, it's a northern brown argus, you fool.

 6 spotted burnet

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So that was that. It was terrible, but necessary, to go back to work. I needed a rest. My legs were so done. I quite like work but at the moment I'm trying to win the lottery. I would like to buy a reliable car and then drive and drive and drive. I would like to drive to India.

All week I never won the lottery though, so at the weekend we went a drive to Gullane. It was really warm, sunny at times yesterday, and it took us in the region of 4 hours to cover just 8 miles. We saw;

old ladies passing the golf shop in my rear-view mirror

some squids

stagshead revisited

I think it's a....small tortoise-shell, that's what it is!!!!

Cannes

grasshopper

70s skirt

lighthouse through a telescope

some bird eating my grasshopper!

PB has tamed a dark green fritillary and is anticipating wowing the East Scotland Butterfly society with his photographs.

a little daisy

the ringlet likes to hide in the grasses

a fish with a kind heart

a gossipy gull

5 spotted burnet, prince of darkness, fresh out of his cocoon

What time is it? 4 hours later.

We nearly ran on round Aberlady bay which would have added a further 6 miles to the run. I wanted the distance in theory but I couldn't be bothered going any further. As it turned out it was lucky for us and also for our ex-neighbour Alan. As we were drawing out of Gullane in the car, the skies were growing darker and darker. Suddenly we spotted our ex-neighbour Alan who used to live downstairs. He was just about to go and get a bus back to Edinburgh so we gave him a lift. Shortly afterwards the skies opened and it rained hard on the righteous and the un-righteous alikeous.

Today I went a 10 mile run sans camera. My legs were sore from the get go. Is it the heat? Is it my age? Is it a kind of punishment? I'm not sure. The weekend is nearly over, again, and we are not yet saved.

The 84 hills of Edinburgh Race and Challenge

This was my 12th running of the 7 hills course on race day. I have raced it 7 times and this was my 5th turn out as a "challenger". When my alarm went off in the morning I could have slept and slept. PB and I had kicked around the idea of "just not" doing it the day before. As the years go by this idea gets more tempting. Maybe that's the trajectory of life. Maybe when you get to the point where your answer to everything is you could "just not" it's time to slip off and become a seal or something.

Anyway. We prepared ourselves by going a run around Gullane the day before. It wasn't very sunny, so not much in the way of b****rf***s, however it was a warm and atmospheric day and we stayed out for a long time, playing on the beach with shells and that :-)

Peter was saying he'd had a long hard week and he didn't feel like racing at all. My running had been totally dud during the week when it tipped with rain for 2 days in a row.

The weather seemed nice enough for the 7 hills, however we were both still sleepy and unconvinced as we wandered up the road to Calton Hill for my 9.45 challenger start. We couldn't get much more spoiled with this race really. It isn't too early and it's a half mile from home. I didn't even have to set my alarm early - just get up at the usual time and get on with it.
We met Emma Hargrave going up the road and she told us about a 100 mile walk she'd done recently. It had taken...35 hours? and had gone over night and her mum had had to pull out because she was ill. It sounded like an ordeal and put the day's work into perspective. Emma wasn't running because she said her feet were still kind of...funny. 35 hours of walking will make a foot funny.

It didn't seem like we left the house early but then it felt like forever hanging around for the start. I spent it moaning to Aileen and then to a friend called Tim Neighbour who was also there. Tim used to actually be a neighbour, and although I used to run, nobody else did. My running was seen as a quirk I think. We used to all (Peter and I, Tim's wife Nicky and Tim himself) share the practice of drinking too much and saying too much until the early hours however. We would have been surprised to discover that we would all be meeting up post-marathon some 20 years hence - and then again at the 7 hills.
Tim was telling me he'd been to see Half Man Half Biscuit the other night - yet another one of these bands that I'd assumed never made it past the 80s but has apparently been circulating ever since. My friend Steve used to like them so I could just remember snatches he used to sing along with. "Is that a Roger Dean poster on your wall?" I hummed to myself, but I couldn't get it. By the magic of the internet I was able to find it just now when I looked. Oh how it comes flooding back.

(WARNING!! It's a day later and I've remembered why I don't like half man half biscuit. The horrid song that I have posted below droned round and round in my head as I tried to sleep last night. The song has a certain merit, capturing the moment when you're sick of something and take a step back from it, but it continues to pull holes in thing after thing without offering anything of merit itself. I can't believe they are still putting ill-thought through and churlish  sentiments to uninspiring music. Watch it at your own risk!)



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Eventually the start did come and we were off. I felt middling. Not as terrible as in the middle of last week but not sprightly either. There seemed to be more challengers than ever before. There was a thick pod of young burly rugby blokes all spitting, shouting to each other and carrying big unnecessary rucksacks of water that kept surrounding me. I couldn't seem to shake them. Eventually they disappeared off forwards. I was glad to see the back of them and I hope I beat them. I think I maybe passed some of them going up the muddy banks at the Hermitage.

The run through Stenhouse and Chesser past the Asda was the worst I remember it. It seemed to go on and on into a warm head-wind, and the traffic was obnoxious. I wasn't in the mood for risking life and limb - I wasn't going at that kind of pace, so I had quite long stands at the side of the road. I saw some wanker in a 4X4 call an older gent runner running alongside me an "arsehole". That prompted a spewing of invective from me about fat bastards who were in a hurry to get to the sausage roll counter.

Let's think about some of the nice things. Being a local race, a lot of runners had turned out to spectate and support, which was lovely. Because of this I've a good set of race photos from the day and without a £30 price-tag! Also there was water and jelly babies and juice in good supply all the way round.

Let's have some photos.

Photos courtesy of Michael Philp.

I felt pretty done by the time I got to Craiglockhart, but then the scrambling up the muddy bank under the lovely cool trees cheered me up. I got a nice cheer from HBTs who told me I was the only one who was running up the hill properly so that spurred me on. 

Getting up to the Braids Hills always feels like you've broken the back of the race. I passed Aileen here. I'm sure we've passed at pretty much the same point before. I really enjoyed getting off-road again and running across the golf-course, even though my legs were fairly done by this point.

Then climbing up to the top of Blackford Hill from the Hermitage, I passed Jenni from club. That was pleasing just because she is so much faster than me on the road now. I've not done much in the way of hills since the Carnethy 5 in February but I seemed far stronger on the hills than on the road.

By Arthur's Seat, however, Jenni had passed me again. The wall behind Pollock Halls has become increasingly dodgy for climbing and the squeeze through the turnstile is no longer feasible. I'd made up my mind in advance not to bother trying to do the wall thing, but just as I was going into Pollock Halls Nick Williamson passed me and for some reason I followed him - quite a long way round I think - although his response to that when I said it afterwards was an offended "F-you!" - but then when I got to the wall someone had put up some forlorn looking mesh that I think was supposed to be helpful for climbing. It was flimsy and insecure, the wall was crumbling with big blocks of masonry falling off, and the whole was topped off with two strands of barbed wire. "Fuck this whole thing entirely" I thought to myself and ran back out the other end as I'd originally intended to. Whether I had now lost any chance of catching Jenni was yet to be seen. And perhaps Aileen had gained ground or indeed passed me! I certainly couldn't take anything for granted.

The worst of all worlds. A whistle-stop tour of the halls.

Nothing to be done, though, except get home as quickly as possible. As I made my way over the grass to the sleeper steps Steve Crane appeared out of nowhere and offered me a gel. Now I've never seen Steve since last November and the end-of war celebrations so it was a surprise to encounter him now. In fact I never fully saw him, as he was behind me. It was nice of him to emerge from deep cover to come and support anyway! I couldn't take him up on the gel however because by this time I was full of squash and jelly beans and jelly babies and I had been thinking it wouldn't be the worst thing if I could throw it all up in a big orange fountain. That never happened though.

Going up to the scrambly bit past the sleeper steps I saw there was a man down with what looked like heat-stroke, lying in the stony gully. He had two men with him already so I didn't have much to add, so didn't stop. I felt guilty every step of the way but I didn't have a phone so couldn't phone anyone - and I couldn't have got him down from there and I couldn't even have told an ambulance where to go because all my names for places on Arthur's Seat are made up! He was duly rescued by a Dunbar Runner and another guy who apparently was an army doctor, so he was in good hands. I was moving on up. My legs by this time were giving out, so I was leaning on them fell-runner style as if my legs from the knees down were just poles that I was planting in the ground. Topping out over the rise I could see, just ahead of me, Jenni Owens....so I gave chase and caught her just before the summit...

2 Photos above - Eoin Lennon

Photo David Worrall

Photo David Worrall

So I had passed Jenni again, but nothing was in the bag. I didn't have much left in the way of ability to up my game - in fact round about now my feet were telling me they were too ouchy to run downhill. "Man up feet" I told them, but they wouldn't. So I took the steep heathery bit down from the summit on my bottom instead, which was a restful change and quicker than a lot of folk as the little paths were dry and covered in ball-bearing like stones.

I took a couple of wrong turns on the usually-familiar route down from the top. This has happened to me before towards the end of the 7 Hills. It is All Too Much. Craig Taylor said something similar as he ran past me, saying he had never in all his days taken a worse route from the summit. Anyway, we were getting there. I didn't want to drop a stitch, so kept on running. On the way up the wee lane towards Calton Hill it was all walkers and so I chugged past them. Then it was the last zig-zag before the top, so I kept on chugging. Then it was the last grassy bit and then it was....hurray, time to walk. A nice Porty came up to me and tried to say encouraging things about how was my race "I made a whole new set of fucking mistakes I've never made before" and maybe I could improve on that "No, I  won't ever improve on it now." In retrospect, maybe that was a bit full on. He just got the first response fresh off the press. It was my 3rd worst time out of 12 and I was not very down-hearted about it at all. It had been funny, mostly, the Chesser stretch being the worst. Now it was time to eat rhubarb tart and lie on the grass....

Peter had a good race and came 1st MV50 adding £45 prize money (tokens) to the £50 he got for being 1st O55 in the marathon.

Later when I saw the results I saw I was the first Porty challenger in, and that seemed pretty good.

I don't know what's next. It might be the 2 miler at the Meadows on Wednesday night! It might also not be.