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| Over the sea (bridge?) to Skye |
Now I’m not technologically minded (and pretty technically
inept if I’m truthful about it) and to date have happily spent my life free of
any form of gadgetry pre-fixed by “i” and still need Simon to work the DVD
player for me. I have also managed to eschew much of the running related
paraphernalia that Runners World and similar would have you believe you need such
as plaster strips for your nose, hand held water bottles on the shortest of
runs, knee length “Paula socks” and those necklace type things Paula is often seen wearing, after all why eat some
form of chemical goo when a nice chunk of home made fruit cake will do the job?
Now my blissfully uncomplicated approach
to running and possibly life in general has been fatally undermined. Personally I blame Bert (Colonel Geek) and
John (1st Lieutenant Geek) for achieving the impossible and
persuading me that a Garmin would make all the difference in the world to my
running and finally, after two extremely poor half marathons at Skye and Barra,
I was persuaded. To be honest after the horror experience that was the
Barrathon I probably could have been persuaded to try anything if someone had
told me it would help my running.
The upshot of this is that now my entire running life is
dominated by this evil little watch whose mission in life appears to be to
remind me how slow I am or how few miles I have actually run. Simon is disgusted by my new found geekiness which is ironic
as he is Mr Geek and I have yet to fathom out the reason why someone who has
the latest of every computer related gadget ever invented has such a dislike and distrust
towards my Garmin.
The first real
test for my shiny new Garmin was to be the Harris half marathon. I suspected at
least part of the reason for my previous two “disaster” half marathons was an
over enthusiastic start to the race so coach van Tuijl told me to aim to set
the Garmin for a rather sedentary 8 min mile pace and stick to it. I promised
that I would try…
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| Uig at sunset the night before the race |
On waking up on race morning the first thing i was aware of was the noise of the wind outside and my first thought was not "oh no, ive got to run 13 miles in this" it was "Oh no, ive got to sail accross the Minch in this" and sure enough within 20 minutes of setting sail I had joined the throng of green faced unhappy people sat outside on deck freezing their
backsides off and staring fixedly at the horizon. Fortunately it was not a long
journey and the rolling motion created by the swell of the sea abated as we
reached the shelter of the Isle of Harris.
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| Choppy Seas |
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| Mist...and choppy seas |
After registering for the race and catching up with friends it was time
to board the bus taking the runners to the start line of this point to point
course. This has the advantage of letting the runners see what is ahead of them
so there are no nasty surprises mid race but equally it means you start the
race under no illusions as to what is lying ahead, a bit of doubled edged sword really. However the best part of the bus
journey is the chance to see the magnificent stretch of white sands of
Luskintyre beach and the view over to the isle of Taransay, famous as the
setting for Castaway, TVs first ever reality big brother style show. But I’ll
forgive it for that as its very beautiful.
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| Luskintyre and Taransay (photo from a previous trip) |
Just before the bus delivers the runners to the start line
there is the famous toilet stop where the bus pulls over and the runners pour
out of the bus and run like a herd of lemmings towards the cliffs to find a suitable
spot to take a comfort break. I always wondered what would happen if this race
was ever televised… (And no, I don’t know what the collective noun for lemmings
is)
By the time we had lined up for the race the wind had not
abated one bit and so everyone knew that they were in for a testing day out.
What I forgot to mention is that the prevailing wind is south westerly…..except
on the day of the 2012 Harris half marathon when it was decidedly blowing in
from the north. I set off behind a group of runners containing those whom I
thought would be my main opposition such as John, Robin, Hamish (my heb half nemesis),
Karen, Simon and Ross who had already said that he was aiming to run exactly
the same time as me and so running behind this large group certainly gave me some
shelter for the first 2 or 3 miles but then the group began to split up and I
was left out on my own trying not to lose contact with the runners ahead.
Because of the gale force wind blowing directly into the faces of the runners
it became no easier to run the downhill sections or the flat sections as at
least on the uphill sections you were getting some shelter from the hill in
front of you. It was truly hard work against the wind and so any jealousy I had
previously towards fellow runners, Nick and Susan’s hebridean cycle holiday
which was to finish in at the Harris half marathon rapidly evaporated. If there
was one thing worse than running into that wind it would have been cycling
My more restrained start meant that at no point in the race
did I feel as awful as I had at Barra despite running the first mile faster
than coach van Tuijl had told me to and I finished comfortably enough. The Garmin’s
reassuring little beeps let me know exactly how fast I was running and exactly
the distance and this also gave me something else to focus on – how far could I
get before it emitted its next little beep?
I was surprised to pass Ross at around the 12 mile point as he was
trying, without success, to flag down a car to give him a lift to the finish. John and Robin had
got away from me as had Simon who yet again had shot off ahead of me, faded,
recovered only to disappear into the distance again this time getting the
better of John. My time was about 4 or 5 slower than I had been aiming for but
most people seemed to have run about 5 minutes slower probably because of the
wind and so I couldn’t grumble. The only problem was that now I was itching to
download the Garmin to see the little charts and graphs of the race that it
produces - hours of endless entertainment to be had in analysing them… .Bert
has told me not to worry about this too much as the novelty value soon wears
off…
Clearly the whisky we had necked at midnight at the youth
hostel in Uig the night before the race had also helped – well it helped me as
I was certainly more relaxed going into this race than I had been for the other
two heb halfs. Definitely a pre-race routine to be repeated…
After a quick wash it was time for the prize giving and this
was both the prize giving for the Harris half. As Harris is the last in the Heb
half series the prizes for the Heb 3 are also handed out and Simon as the
sponsor for the heb 3 had the honour of handing out the prizes. This time there
was a bit of success for HBT who seemed to have been strangely absent from the
Heb half series this year as the trotter team of Andrew, Jon and Graham won the
team prize and Eilis won the women’s prize for the Harris half marathon. I
picked up the V35 women’s prize so there are definitely some advantages to
getting old. However nothing could have prepared me for the surprise of winning
the V35 prize for the Heb 3 especially after the shockers that were Skye and
Barra and to think that I had been so close to pulling out of Barra half way
round – an important lesson there methinks!
It is also the day of reckoning in terms of the cumulative
time for the Heb 3 and Eric was unfortunate to have missed his target time by a
mere 27 seconds over the 3 half marathons but then I was pretty non plussed about my
times too.
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| HBT!!! |
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| John wins...again |
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| Simon presenting the prizes to the Heb 3 winners |
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| Tasting some firewater that Jim had bought along |
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| Its obviously good stuff! |
Well that’s the heb halfs over for another year. Maybe by the time they start again next year I will have worked out how to download the info from the Garmin.
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