Running Away: February 2022

2021 The year that was part 1

I’m always impressed with the diligence with which Peter Buchanan and Mary apply to keeping their blogs updated. I guess the WHOLE IDEA of a blog is to keep it updated regularly to keep your readership entertained and informed, a task at which I keep failing. You would have thought during lockdown I would have had plenty of time to do this but that doesn’t seem to have been the case. I didn’t really feel that I had done anything inspiring enough to write about anyway.. I thought maybe I could get away with it by making this just a list of highlights for the year but somehow I don’t think this post will even qualify as a list of highlights, “highlights” doesn’t seem to quite cover this this year when leaving the house could be considered a highlight.

At the end of 2020 everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief, thank god that’s over, and then 2021 came along and said “here hold my beer” To be honest though the pandemic was the least of my problems, a lot of the year was spent under a deluge of misery, emails and teams messages in what was The Job From Hell. More on that later.

Still once lockdown was lifted spring was well underway to lift the spirits and I made a start on the Deeside runners checkpoint challenge –

A Checkpoint on Morven

This beauty was sunbathing on the path

There were those Saturday runnings of #nottheparkrun when parkrun was still banned for God knows what reason so the route was run and coffee and cake was had in the glorious sunshine. Good job it was sunny as some neds had burned the Hazlehead park café down. Life (outside The Job From Hell) seemed to be on the up.

Some races made a reappearance too such as the Blair Atholl trail outsider weekend of races where the glorious sunny weather continued and I did the 10k and most of the field got lost. I followed a guy who had downloaded the route on to his watch so I didn’t get lost. Sensible chap. Simon also caught up with race machine Mark Gormley who he hadn’t seen for years. I don’t think i've ever met anyone who races as much as Mark.

And the fantastic wee Clashmach hill race starting and finishing in the Huntly cattle mart

Sometime in the pre pandemic distant past when lockdowns were only a thing in thriller novels and plagues were something in history books I had entered a race in wales, The race across Snowdonia. It was an ultra race and a mountain race and it looked fabulous but lack of access to train on the hills due to lockdowns and the demands from The Job From Hell conspired to ensure that there was no way I could do the race so I didn’t start. In hindsight it was a good thing I didn’t attempt it, no women completed the course over the two days of running required with the quickest female finisher on day 1 taking 16 hours. I’m not sure even “type 2 fun” describes that adequately.

So what to do? A holiday in Wales beckoned and we spent 10 days in glorious sunshine and an ascent of Snowdon in my own time. I think I quite like holidays without races. I can only conclude This pandemic has made me lazy.