A quick change!

At the start of this week we got some bad news, Gordon the third member of our team has had to pull out. He told us that he has been having some pretty serious hospital tests and got some very bad news from his doctors, and amongst other more serious things he was told that he is not allowed to drive. We looked into various ways to get Goron and his bike to Inverness without his needing a car, but unfortunately he lives in quite a remote area and the logistics, effort and costs were spiralling; and frankly he had other more important things to worry about. So Gordon asked us if we could try and find a replacement as it would take a weight off his mind.

With under 2 weeks to go, finding a replacement at this short notice who would a) be fit enough to do the 20 mile foot section followed by 30 mile cycle section and b) want to!!! seemed fairly remote; but never one to shy away from a challenge I set to getting the word out.

I spoke to Mum who, with a rather large number of Highland Cross under her belt, might be able to get the word out round the Highlands; we posted notices up on the local climbing club website (which then promptly crashed); we got messages out on the social networking tool Twitter; we contacted Highland Cross in case they knew of anyone; and we contacted people who knew people in the local hill running club. It was 4 days of frantic searching but finally Jo got in touch.

Jo is running the Lairig Ghru hill race on 26th June (the week after the Highland Cross) and I can only assume she is treating the Highland Cross as a Training Run!!!!!!!!! The Lairig Ghru is 30 miles, taking in 2700ft of ascent so is significantly tougher than the Highland Cross, though without the cycle section - and the whole thought of it terrifies me. Colin and I have spent the last 3 months working as hard as we can to get fit enough to do the Highland Cross and are still nervous about it; I suppose all these things are relative.

Jo is a member of our climbing club but we've not yet met her - she must be a superstar. She has signed up to an event that we've spent months training for at 8 days notice. Somebody had suggested that her husband Adrian might be up for the challenge, but he is currently on a stretch of the John O Groats to Lands End cycle ride so can't help out (!!). Jo got the message and thought that Highland Cross would be perfect for her and so volunteered. She is coming round tonight to sort the paperwork and to work out transport arragements etc and I can't wait to meet someone who is so generous (crazy?!) as to help us out as such short notice.

We are very sorry that Gordon isn't able to do his second Highland Cross this year, but we will be doing our best to do his team proud and I suspect Jo is going to put in a time that will put us all to shame!