PEAK PER HOUR TARGET IS BORN
Beinn Bheoil from Ben Alder. Photo tms.nickbramall.com
I planned a totally new route starting on Skye as before to guarantee daylight, and also to allow for a 24 hour delay in certain weather conditions, but this time finishing in the far north thus involving much less driving. I made no concessions to the route whatsoever, planning what I considered to be the optimum route and placing changeovers with no diversion from that line. I decided on a maximum leg length of 21 miles, with a maximum climb on any leg of 3000 metres. (In fact, due to mis-measurement the Beinn Dearg leg ended up being 22 miles.)
Even without this restriction I tried to keep legs as short as reasonably possible, assessing that the speed thus gained would outweigh the the extra tiredness caused by more walking in and out. (The walk-ins/outs to changeovers eventually covered a third extra distance again on top of the leg mileage.)
In the end there were only 16 legs identical to 1990 with a further 8 runs being in the opposite direction. The number of long legs was considerably reduced from 1990 although the total number of legs was only increased from 82 to 85.
The view from Sgor Gheoidh, Cairngorms. Photo Fran Britain
Realising that the big problems in 1990 had arisen at points where Tony had left the detail sketchy, I planned a didactic schedule for every runner and vehicle throughout the event. I later went on to identify “trigger” points for all legs. Car driving duties were invariably given to the person who was soonest to run. Where the van had to go off a long way, I tried to obey the same precept, but where this was impossible, I always sent the person who had just finished in the hope that they could sleep at the other end. The idea was to make the gaps between required activity as long as possible.
There is no charge for reading this account but please consider donating to the RNIB, the charity we ran for.
Share this page