Trans-alpine challenge by doc_s

Aaargh, only a few days until I'm on a plane and out of here. I fly to Nairobi in 5 days and I am totally under-prepared. Rather than spend a two week taper kicking my heels round Glasgow, I'm joining a certain young man in Kenya for a couple of weeks. We're going to climb Mount Kenya and spend a few days on safari, etc to help me chill and and distract me from the impending doom of race day.

Actually, I'm feeling very positive about it all at the moment and surprisingly calm. I had a good few days training and despite needing about 3 extra days to get my stuff organised, i finally feel it's all coming together.

Friday, i did half an hour on the turbo-trainer before work and popped into the gym after work for another couple of rounds of the 4.40 challenge, still not getting it.

Saturday was a beautiful day and I headed up to some mountains called the arrochar alps, within easy reach of Glasgow. I was on my own so i was happy it was a clear day as it's not a route I would attempt in poor visibility. I spent several hours yomping up and down hills although an early navigational error cost me dearly as it meant I had to ascend the steep side of Ben Vorlich, knackering my legs and blistering my heels right at the start (damn those pesky inov8s). The advantage of being on my own was that I could just go at my own pace and even stopped to take some pics and eat a sandwich at one point.

The disadvantages were having to rely on my map-reading skills and knowing that if i fell it could be some time before I was found. In fact, at one of my cheerier moments my thinking went along the lines of 'oh dear, when i fall off here I hope I don't knock myself out or shatter my skull because then i can't phone for help. Hmm, there's probably no signal anyway. Ah well, i'm probably miles off where I think I am and search and rescue would never find me. Oh look, there's some sheep droppings, that's good, at least another living creature has been here before. Oh dear, there's a sheep's skull.' And so on, as you can tell i'm prone to a bit of melodrama! Thankfully my only injury was a bruised palm from toppling of some slippy rocks into a river, my river crossings have never been great and by this point my legs no longer felt like my own. I wobbled halfway across and sploosh, in I went. I'm glad no-one was around as my pride would have been severely dented. It was a long and tough day, but I thoroughly enjoyed most of it, although staggering across a massive bull copulating with his favourite female on the last section of path before the carpark did nothing for my mood. As a city girl at heart I had no idea what to do, after the intial instinct to panic and run screaming in the other direction had subsided, I decided to creep into the undergrowth and take a detour. Despite the best efforts of the rest of the cows to reveal me by their loud mooing (I have decided cows can be quite nasty) I escaped unscathed, thank goodness because I was reduced to a slow stagger by that point and would have been trampled if I'd been relying on my legs to speed me away.

Sunday was a painful day and i decided to utilise a bit of cross-training so hopped on the bike and cycled with a friend to the kilpatricks and ran for about an hour on the hills. After the first 15 minutes i decided my legs were ok, and they were, until I had to descend. Saturday's efforts had completely trashed my quads and it was a very slow and painful descent back to the bike. After I got back I popped round to see my nephew (he's 8 weeks old) and some of my sister-in-law's homemade lasagne, and a kiss and a cuddle from him made me feel miles better.

He doesn't always look so terrified- the pre-flash on my camera always startles him so I have a series of pics with him staring with big crazy eyes!

Today was an enforced rest day for several reasons: I had no time to train, I had a massage booked with Phil the sadist (defo some bad stuff going on with my R leg- nasty posterior tibial and plantar fascia action tonight) and i could barely walk, it was a backwards shuffle downstairs again this morning.

My trans-alps interview was apparently on Radio Clyde news all saturday morning, and I completely missed it because I was out running. I did an interview on Sunny Govan radio tonight and was on the show for about 45 minutes. I was pretty nervous but the girls and guy at the station were really lovely and helped put me at ease, in fact by the end I was quite enjoying myself. Hopefully some of it will bring some publicity or funds for the LHM in, or get some people along to the fundraiser on wednesday night.

I need a PA or secretary or just general dogsbody to get me organised before I leave, I'm only back for 1 day between kenya and trans-alps but i like it all a bit high pressure, keeps me on my toes. Ok, enough waffle from me, this seems like an inordinately long blog but i was too knackered to update over the weekend.

Hope you are all keeping fit. Cheers x