Scottish Adventures

I’ve been really lucky, in that in the last two weeks I’ve been able to visit Scotland twice!

Some might think lucky is an odd word to describe visiting Scotland, but having only ever been in and out of Glasgow for work in the past, I never really got to appreciate how incredible the country is.

With the fam, we were heading to the wild west of Scotland’s coast for our best mates wedding and I returned a week later, this time for work, but also for more appreciation of what could be achieved up here.

Whilst there was a fair amount of merriment going on at the wedding, I still managed to sneak in a couple of mountainous runs, between the festivities. If you ever wonder how to keep the motivation up, just find somewhere new to go. Obviously you can’t fly up to Scotland every week, but even if it means a quick drive/ride/tube/train from your home, as opposed to the normal route you do leaving your front door, there are plenty of opportunities to explore, not far from our homes.

Back to the wild west coast, staring out of the lounge window, there was a long road that led up to a mountain then kind of disappeared at the foot of the hills into what looked like a windy, windswept route.

As I had no such thing as phone signal, my mobile was useless for route planning / mapping. I had a shoddy copy of an OS map from the house, but that was about it. So leaving the comforts of the underfloor heating, I set off at a slowish pace in the knowledge that I had a 35mph tailwind and a rather large hill in front of me.

It was strangely liberating, not being able to stop and check the distance I had travelled or the times I was running. I held my head up high and took in the incredible views this most magnificent of places offered me. Around every corner felt like looking at a fairytale Scottish table top book of best views. It was breathtaking.

Before I knew it, I’d counquered the mountain (ok, maybe it was a large hill to the Scots…either way it was massive!) and turned to see the most amazing panoramic views of the route back down to the house.

I also realised, that the house looked pretty far away and their was a wall of cloud/ rain / wind heading towards it. Not just a little line in the sea, literally a wall that you couldn’t see through. We had just missed the tail end of the hurricane that hit scotland the week before (the centre had gone through where we were staying).

Heading back down the hill was considerably easier, but busting around the bottom corner, before the km straight back to the house, it felt like my lungs were about to explode. Not, I don’t think to physical exhaustion, but more because of the sheer speed of wind forcing its way into my lungs. We later learned that it had picked up to about 50mph! Breathing became a tricky issue and I had to take my wooly hat off to cover my mouth to actually breath properly.

Walking through the front door to a log fire heated house was a welcome relief from the Scottish wildlands but it felt even more exhilirating knowing I’d conquered that beast of a “hill” behind the house, staring down at us through the living room window.

Even more of a surprise, was upon our return home (and with access to wifi) I plotted my route and discovered it was the furthers I’d ever run. Considering 6 weeks ago, I’d not run more than 1 km before, this was a huge hurdle to overcome.

So my advice? If things get a little stagnant in training, go explore. Go #getlostrunning and rediscover that drive to go further.