It sometimes seems like training for the Highland Cross takes over your life, it's too easy to miss out on events and trips away because you need to 'get in a run' or 'do more miles on the bike'. Colin and I are keen climbers, and joined the Ochil Mountaineering Club when we moved to Stirlingshire at the end of last year; but we've hardly been out on rock this year let alone out with the club as much as we would like. However, this weekend we were determined we would do the club trip to Skye and had a lovely run and bike ride planned to coincide with the occasion. So, when the trip was cancelled due to bad weather, we were determined to go on a trip of some sorts and joined a few hardy club members in the Cairngorms where we hoped the weather would be much better.I spent Friday pouring over maps and plotting with tools to find an alternative route for our long run on Saturday and in the end I came up with three options which we could choose between based on weather and underfoot conditions when we arrived. On the Saturday morning we went for the longer run based on it being more sheltered and involving no river crossings, it was slightly more than our target distance but we decided that we could walk the first mile to warm up and that would give us our target distance of 15 miles running.
We started off well, the track up to Ryvoan bothy was nice running and generally the shelter of the trees prevented the wind from slowing us down. The downside of running through forestry tracks is that they are not always clearly marked on the map (or that is my excuse anyway!) and at around the 5 mile mark we ended up heading the wrong way down a track for just over a mile before realising our mistake and having to turn back from where we weren't supposed to be. To begin with this didn't seem to affect us too much, but by about the 10 mile mark we had actually run 12 miles and still had 5 to go and the folly of our mistake was beginning to take its toll. The reassuring thing is that though Colin stopped running after his GPS told him he had run 15 miles and then walked the final 2.5 miles, and I stopped after around 16 miles, walking the rest, we both recovered well and managed a total distance of over 18 miles if you include the walk. We nearly did the whole Highland Cross foot section distance by mistake!!!This mistake aside the run was really pleasant, and because it was low level we avoided much of the bad weather which was hitting the tops. Our friends who did some munro walking that day suffered a little more buffetting and encountered a river which required extreme measures to cross. Photographs of this are censored for reasons of decency!
On the Sunday we were supposed to be doing a long bike ride but the wind had significantly increased and was gusting well over 50mph in places - after such a big day on Saturday we decided (with very little persuasion!) to postpone our cycle ride until the Monday and joined the others for a low level walk from Aviemore. Apart from a few showers the weather was fantastic, and if it wasn't for the fact that even at only a few hundred metres in height the wind was blowing so hard I couldn't stand upright, you would have wondered why we weren't off doing something more intrepid - as we were supposed to be!We topped the weekend off on Monday with a bike ride taking in a circuit of Stirling, Carron Valley, Fintry and Kippen - where we stopped for tea and cake of course! - before returning home. The wind had dropped, the sun shone and I really enjoyed it. All in all it was well worth changing our plans over the weekend, and though we weren't always where we were supposed to be - from a training perspective I hope we are right on track.
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