Had a few good runs this week. Notably Wednesday evening I had a wee 5m saunter around Mugdock with Karen and her neighbour Mike...whom she has convinced to run the turbo x too. We did a recce of some of the course, it was pretty boggy due to the huge amount of rain, but then that's the idea I think!
Thursday and Friday slipped by with work and suddenly I found myself waking up on Saturday morning to a beautiful blue sky and blazing sun. Turbo x day!
So I zipped up to Karens where our team of two had grown to 5, Mike the aforementioned neighbour, Sharon and Carrie more friends of Karens, they were set to do the Monster this weekend but were let down by two of their team mates and so differred to the x instead!
We dumped clothes and piled into Mikes car. Drove the mile down the road to the visitor centre which was already buzzing with pre race vibes.
After collecting our chips we chatted to a few familiar faces including Robert McFarlane (who had a great first off road run), did a small warm up and joined the start queue!! As we lined up I was tapped on the shoulder by a big bloke...:"are you a firefighter?"
me : "err yes!"
turned out I had been spotted at the secc the day before...the crew I was with had been sent down to the Rescue on the clyde with the MIU. Bob turned out to be a crew commander from Springbun, he and Michelle were running to raise money for Ewan Williamson the Firefighter who lost his life in Edinburgh in July. With them and also running was a member of Ewans watch from Tollcross.
So the race began, the closest thing I have done to this kind of race was the Mont Blanc Marathon, all off road, few less hills!! The mood was great and everyone seemed up for what was to follow.
Given that we had agreed to run for fun and as a 'team' we slotted in at the rear, if racing you really would need to be near the front as passing places were few in many stretches of the course.
It was suitably muddy and some areas had been dug out and replaced with peaty slurry...thighs on some, waist high on me!!
Towards the end we hit the 'turbo zone' a timed mile section that is a little extra muddy-at one point I was pulling myself free using a tree trunk such was the suction of the gloop-i think the winning time of this section was about 10 mins.
The total course length was 10.3m I did a bit of running back and forth as I just can't do down hill slow and in a neat traffic jam, but I did double back a few times so my watch read 11.5m
It was a fab morning and the goody bag was great too. A salomon tec tee shirt, water bottle (although mine was missing) drinks, shakes, munchies, facepacks, soaps etc.
It reminded me of how much fun it is to take part and now I'm just looking for the next one....definately going to do the Mighty Deerstalkeer that I pulled out of last your...meanwhile...any suggeation?
Karen and Mike
Thanks to Robert for the photos.
