The Fling Training Weekend

The Highland Fling Training Weekend

Mr Highland Fling himself - Race Director John Duncan

For a nice change I didn’t arrive in the dead of night, such is the joy of living and working in Aberdeen ie: miles from anywhere and traffic generally at a standstill. Hurrah for the early Friday flier from work! My arrival was greeted with unexpected enthusiasm, probably due to the two large tubs of cake that I was carrying, and I was presented with my training weekend “goody bag” containing, amongst other things a nice Sportiva hat and some Injinjii socks as Malcolm Croft, the rep for Sportiva, was on hand all weekend to let runners try out various Sportiva products. I had enough time to quickly get changed before heading out on the evening “headtorch run” with a brand new super duper Petzl headtorch to try out courtesy of Gregg, the rep from Petzel who was also at the training weekend. We set out into the freezing cold night to run a small loop behind the By the Way hostel, HQ for the training weekend up on to the West Highland Way stopping to re-group at the gate at the top of the hill. The head torch was fabulous but it was also £140 of fabulousness and sadly it wasn’t to be part of the goody bag contents. 

Stopping to regroup

There was less snow than I thought there might be and it was very still and chilly but on getting back to the hostel there was a welcome meal of stew and a nice glass of wine waiting and a lot of chat with the other runners on this training weekend. It was such a good chance to catch up with folk.

I was later to bed than planned, had a few more glasses of wine than planned and far less sleep than was required – not as planned! However, I was not as late and my wine consumption was no where near as impressive as some I could mention. These ultra runners party like they run! And then fail to find the actual bed they should be sleeping in. Carol Martin’s sleep tracker had some interesting data!

I didn’t sleep well, the dorm room was stifling hot and I slept fitfully but I hadn’t realised how hot the room was until we were all woken from our slumbers before 6am by the fire alarm and all piled out into the coolness of the corridor. We were swiftly assured that it was a false alarm and so we all traipsed back to the room. I’m not sure those who had attempted to put on the highly complicated item of clothing that is the Injinji sock actually made it out of their rooms in the first place such was the logistical puzzle that pulling on a pair of these in the dark whilst semi conscious poses.

Fairly sure it was pointless going back to bed by now I opted for an early bowl of porridge while curled up on the sofa. 

Today was the day for the long run, a chance for those doing the Fling to recce what is the most technical section of the route along the side of Loch Lomond. John recommended that we do an “out and back” run and run for time rather than a specific distance as the terrain would make it quite slow going. Some folk took this option with others heading north along the West Highland Way towards Kingshouse. Despite being early February it was a lot milder than I expected as we set out along the Lochside and despite the very late night had by some everyone made it to the start of their respective runs. Very impressive. It was a still day and from a distance Loch Lomond seemed as still as a millpond, just like a sheet of glass and I was soon peeling off the selection of far too many layers that I had worn.

Setting off from Bein Glas Farm

The group of runners soon spread out into a line

Loch Lomond

Soon the large group of runners were strung out all along the Lochside in a long line before fragmenting into smaller groups. I ran on my own for a while, passing some runners, being passed by others before tagging along with Carol for a while and enjoying the chat. I had decided on a 3 hour run so after an hour and a half I turned about and set off northwards back to the start point at Beinn Glas farm. John was correct in his advice, the path was extremely twisting and turning, narrow and strewn with rocks and boulders and mud and tree roots. It was very scenic running along by the waters edge with the snow capped peaks all around but it was very slow going. I could hear various birdlife such as geese but didn’t manage to spot them. Maybe the runners ahead of me had disturbed them. It’s not really the season for West Highland Way walkers but there were still plenty of folk out and about, no doubt startled by the number of runners coming past on the trail.

I bumped into Noanie who was “sweeping” along with her ever growing collection of dogs and a few runners who were behind me but who were carrying on to run for longer than I had chosen to but for the most part I was on my own and enjoyed the scenery and the peace and quiet. I got back to the car park just after another 3 runners and managed to scrounge a lift back to Tyndrum for a hot shower, soup, tea and cake and to wait for everyone else to get back. Interestingly my “unhealthy” cake went down really well but my “healthy” banana flapjacks were nowhere nearly as well received. Says a lot about runners.

Once everyone got back it was time for the afternoon entertainment to start. There were sports massages on offer and yoga classes by fellow Fife AC runner Morgan Windram who often features highly in the results of this race. Before dinner there was a showing of a film of top US ultra runner Anton Krupicka about his running history and life of adventure with lots of lovely film footage of various American landscapes and then a talk from top GB ultra runner Debbie Martin Consani the topic of which was women in ultra races. Did you know women have a higher percentage of completions in ultras per number who start than men? But that there are generally less women running ultras. These two facts appear to be linked as research has shown that women are less likely to attempt something unless they are sure that they can complete it whereas men are generally more gung-ho, confident and optimistic about their chances when sometimes their confidence can be misplaced.

Debbie Martin Consani

It was a very entertaining talk and Debbie went on to describe her last most extreme race which was the 330k Tour des Geants in the alps, an achievement most of us could only dream of.

I knew from attending the Fling training weekend last year that the dinner was worth waiting for and in particular the legendary sticky toffee pudding and I was not to be disappointed. 

Eating in amongst the array of Sportica shoes!

Double pudding!!

It was a relatively early night for me but again I slept fitfully even though the dorm window was wedged well and truly open for the night. I was still a bit sleepy as we set out on the recovery run, another loop of 4 miles taking in the west highland way (or in Morgan’s case two loops!) I got to try out some Sportiva shoes during the recovery run which were very comfy but I was unsure about how good their grip would be in true mountain conditions but they were ideal for trail running.

A trial run for these Sportiva shoes

Thanks to Morgan after the recovery run I got a chance to have a go at Thai massage, something I don’t think I had ever heard of before but I enjoyed it, so much so I’ve signed up for one of Morgan’s classes. I am hoping Yoga and Thai massage can help my old creaking joints and muscles.

When yoga gets silly...

Thai Massage

After more cups of tea it was time to pack up and go home after a very enjoyable weekend. Although I have no plans to do the Fling this year this was a useful fun way to spend a weekend. When you are training alone its sometimes easy to lose confidence in what you are doing and imagine that everyone else is doing so much more than you are and that their training is going so much better than yours so in some ways these weekends where you can get together with other runners are reassuring as you get to see that everybody has the same trials and tribulations in life that you do and they also have to manage their running around everything else that life throws at them.I think I have said before that these Fling training weekends are not how you would usually expect a training weekend to be, they are very relaxed with no dull chat about training programmes and pace times (it’s unlikely that I would be there if they did!), I get the impression you could come along and not run a step all and nobody would bat an eyelid. I can’t wait for the next one.

Lomond hills on a winters day

Looking towards West Lomond From East Lomond

To be honest it was a bit of a sluggish and slow start not helped along by the promised weather forecast with the prophets of snow doom clearly in charge of the overhead motorway gantry signage. However, weather Armageddon did not arrive, quite the reverse actually, and the Lomond hills were very busy with people, some maybe not quite as well equipped as you would expect for a winter mountain walk. Some appeared to not be enjoying the frozen ground on the steep East Lomond ascent path something from which I derived a little amusement and even more appeared not to be enjoying the steep frozen descent, from which I derived even more amusement. 

The first climb felt like a bit of a slog and it seemed to take an age for my legs to get going but eventually I made it up the path on to the exposed flank of the hillside. Despite the glorious blue skies and sun shine it was a strong, biting cold wind sweeping the summits so I barely stayed long enough to take a photo or two before descending towards the masts and then on towards the limekilns. The timber walkways above the boggy ground were icy and so I took it a bit easy here as I didn’t really fancy a dook in the freezing boggy water underneath the walkway. 

The Limekilns

I took a slightly different route skirting around the famers fields just above the Craigmead road to get back towards the Craigmead car park just to avoid the herds of walkers and turned into the farm track just before the car park, almost going full length on the ice in the process. From here the paths at the reservoirs were free of ice and, even better, almost free of walkers as well as being relatively sheltered from the wind so it was almost warm. Eventually I dropped into Glenvale and then climbed up to the summit of West Lomond. Happily by now my legs seemed to have woken up a bit and were not objecting quite so much.

I tried to hide from the bitter chill of the wind in amongst the little semi-circle of stones by the trig point and managed a couple of photos but the wind was eye wateringly strong. Initially I had thought I would run back towards the middle car park and then descend back to Falkland via Maspie Den but Maspie Den is on the north side of the hill and in the forestry so there was a good chance of ice as there was no way the sun would have got to it yet if it was going to at all today. Instead I braved the herds of walkers, with solo’s and pairs seemingly to have been replaced by larger groups which took more effort to negotiate my way past and climbed to the summit of East Lomond again. I didn’t really stop at the top this time which was by now covered with folk and quickly descended down into Falkland missing out the frozen path completely by careering down the less slippery tussocky grass to the side of the path and then picking my way down the frozen steps through the woods a bit more cautiously back to the car which was parked just at the bottom of the path next to the piles of rubble that used to be the old Falkland Paper Mill.