![]() ![]() I decided as I’d done at Jedburgh that I’d use as few of those as possible and opted for a drop bag at Rowardennan and one at Beinglas Farm. There are 4 checkpoints along the race route where you can leave drop bags with extra food for your race. I also therefore managed and early night and slept pretty well until the alarm went at 3pm. This is something I will ensure I do before any major race, no matter if at home or abroad. I’d freed up the day before the race workwise so that I could get my final prep sorted and just chill and relax before the day. Overall it turned out to be pretty perfect conditions. Air temp was cool but after a bit of rain at the start we got intermittent sun from around 2 hrs into the race onwards. I still went with a couple of extra layers as I didn’t trust it and as the race progressed I was peeling layers off at regular intervals. Luckily with about 24 hours to go it was looking a bit more upbeat with even the chance of some sun. I was tempted at one point to not even bother going as the weather forecast was as biblical as it was during my first WHW race attempt and I didn’t fancy repeating the experience. I had also spent the previous weekend in Austria, doing lots of Mountain running and was interested to see how well I would have recovered from this. The Highland Fling is a relatively flat runnable course in comparison. Trainingwise my focus has been on hills as my main 2015 events are Zugspitz 100k and UTMB. I’d also gone from virtually no running in January to 400k in March with no major issues (except right foot and calf occasionally). I was hoping I’d still have the endurance from Strathpuffer. I knew I could complete the distance as I’ve raced the course before and done other events of similar distance and beyond but at the very least I wanted a PB and therefore go under 9:57 hours. To be honest, I didn’t really know what to expect from the Highland Fling Ultra this as my longest training run had been 21 miles so once I’d get past the 2 nd checkpoint at Balmaha I’d be in ‘new’ territory. We’d have a nice ding dong battle throughout the day. The Highland Fling start was no different but I think I was equally surprised to find Andy Johns there. It has become a bit of a trademark and you are likely to find me mixing it with some people in the race early on who are a bit surprised to see me at that end of the field. I achieved similar at Transvulcania in 2014. People could follow my progress from sitting far back in the Strathpuffer to eventually finishing 22 nd by effectively just biding my time. Pacing and pace management has always been a big thing for me in the races that I have done and something I try to relay back to the athletes I coach. Less often do we find things in a race where we just have to say: I’ll do that again! Most times we find lots of things that went wrong and we want to do better. Every race you do you should learn from to improve for the next race on the calendar. ![]()
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