THERE’S lots of different advice about training for a marathon. Everyone, however, seems to be agreed that you need to do some regular distance runs, building up to a last long run three or four weeks before the event.
While I don’t have any difficulty in fitting in the shorter runs of up to 12 or 13 miles, the longer distances prove a challenge. It was only three weeks till the marathon and the most I’d run in training was 19 miles, largely off-road. I would have to bite the bullet and fit in a long run on roads.
Usually, I like to run somewhere new or different. A week or so earlier, I’d taken an opportunity to jog a last section of the north coast from Scullomie, near Tongue, to Bettyhill. It had proved harder than expected.
My plan had been to kayak from Bettyhill to the old harbour at Scullomie, then jog back to the starting point. I hadn’t planned to take too long over the paddle, expecting indifferent weather. Instead, it turned out to be a day of rare calm with only a gentle swell once through the breakers off the mouth of the Naver. Just too good to hurry. A succession of sea caves and narrow channels between rocks with a leisurely exploration of that spectacular Skerray coast led to a landing on the little sandy bay of Neave Island.
I couldn’t resist scrambling up through long grass and heather to the top of the rocky island, admiring the deep clefts and overhanging cliffs to the north and west. In the dunes I disturbed a huge, very handsome bird with speckled black-and-white plumage, legs set well back with big webbed feet and a long pointy bill. With a strange wailing call it waddled off across the beach. A rare great northern diver, perhaps moulting? It shouldn’t really have been there, according to the books.
These islands off Tongue and Skerray, which very few visit, are simply amazing places for wild flowers and birds and rock scenery such as you wouldn’t believe existed in the UK. I’d have liked to take in Eilean nan Ron as well, but had to leave time for that run! So instead I kept close to the north coast past Skerray harbour, finding two fine tunnels through the headland between Lamigo Bay and Port an t’ Strathain, both fine beaches.
A mile on, paddling past slabby rocks off the deserted village of Sleiteil, it would have been only another half hour or so below broken cliffs to Scullomie.
But then the Rabbit Isles, just a mile away across almost calm water beckoned... and when most of the way over it occurred to me that maybe it would even be calm enough to negotiate, for the first time, that very narrow natural arch through the northernmost isle, Sgeir an Oir.
So another couple of miles detour to find too much swell, yet a detour not regretted in such a wonderful spot on such a good day. And then once landed on the middle isle I had to explore again, walking up through deep purple heather and blue scabious to admire the panorama of mountain and island and Kyle from the highest point.
So, I eventually pulled the boat up over the stones at Scullomie after the best part of a day’s paddle and exploration. My sights had already been reduced from the longer run round Modsary and Skerray to the shortest possible route, taking the main road to Borgie then down to Torrisdale and across the hill to Invernaver. At most 12 miles, it should have been easy. But it was warm and sticky, though, fortunately, the sun had gone behind cloud spreading northwards.
After a couple of miles the legs loosened up and I enjoyed a slow jog up over the heathery moors past the lochs with very little traffic on the road. An hour or so later and I crossed the footbridge near the mouth of the Borgie and, not bothering to check the map, missed the path resulting in wet feet and a lot of pushing through long vegetation, then a steep, heathery scramble up the hillside.
Hot and tired I kept on jogging, round the hilltop lochan, down through more heather and slopes covered in Mountain Avens, then all the way south to the road bridge, back up the far side to Bettyhill and down to the pier, almost opposite where I’d been 45 minutes earlier.
That flask of tea in the car was most welcome, but I still had to drive to Scullomie to collect the boat. Maybe the trip could have been better planned...
FROM home to Dunnet Head and back by the shortest route is between 22 and 23 miles, mostly on roads. Just right for that last long run, and a grey morning with rain forecast gave no incentive to do anything more adventurous. So by 7.30am I was heading over the hill, trying without success to keep my feet dry on the track down towards Olrig which had degenerated into the usual winter sea of mud.
Already the Olrig trees were showing signs of autumn colour. For most it was an ordinary Monday morning and the school buses were circuiting the lanes picking up children.
Someone was out in Dunnet Bay in a sea kayak; it looked a bit dismal under leaden skies with a cold offshore force four. I kept to the road, trying to keep my feet dry a bit longer. The Dunnet caravan site was still busy with camper vans, it seems to me that this kind of tourist suffers most in wet weather as they’re not really outdoor folk and have nothing to do except sit miserably in their van looking at the rain... which, as I headed out along the Brough road, I could see enveloping the landscape behind me in sheets.
The Dunnet Head road is quite exposed so I was glad of lightweight waterproofs I’d carried, even though they made the jogging a bit harder. I’d already eaten my banana so my cereal bar would have to last a long time. Harebells, patches of fine purple heather and even some waterlilies in roadside lochs brightened the dreich scene, but Dunnet Head itself was as bleak as it gets in September, with mist blowing across at the viewpoint. Drinking the last of my juice and rationing myself to half that cereal bar, I set off for the 11 miles home, now mostly into the wind.
One or two determined tourists were driving out to the head, to see very little, but the rain was showing signs of easing off as I slowly jogged the long two miles into the wind from Brough to Dunnet.
The sands, even on a day like this, were a highlight of the run I’d been looking forward to – the beach empty, just one dog-walker; the remains of a wrecked dinghy; a dead gannet; banks of that smelly algae which turns the sea red and always seems to get washed up by the ton these days; a 4x4 with a tent pitched on the roof, presumably as a precaution against lions and snakes; and lots of water in the burns, but with soaking feet anyway, I just splashed through.
I wished I’d brought more food, a day like this uses up a lot of calories and hunger was certainly going to knock on the last four miles home over the hill. But the weather was brightening and the wind dropping. Hopefully, after a run like that, the marathon would be a doddle...
