Meeting the gang

After weeks of nervous anticipation, I'm glad to say I survived my first WHW training run. I neither want to question my sanity or fake an injury. Quite the opposite in fact. I'm really looking forward to it. Meeting some of the "family" has put me at ease. We met at Drover's Inn at headed north to Tyndrum. After about a mile we naturally split into groups. No guessing where I was. And you won't need clues to guess where Marco was. Yep, I was at the back with the social ones. Marco was up the front trying to put everyone in an early grave. So much for his race tactics for being the "dark horse" ;-).
The run was great - albeit wet and windy. It was nice to share nerves with WHW virgins and gain some knowledge from the more experienced.
I chat mostly with Ellen. She's off to do the Everest marathon next week, so we gibbered about running, trekking and altitude.
When we got to Tyndrum the lead group had been there for sometime. Davy was contemplating which way to reject the Cullen Skink that he had consumed. Not an obvious choice, but I'm sure there was reasoning. I didn't hang about for long, as I had to get back to Drover's toute Suite. Marco and I had a wedding reception (Tom and Caroline's) to go to in Aberdeen. I ran the whole route back by myself. The rain had stopped, but the wind was still pretty strong. The Way backwards is actually much tougher going south in this section. There are some nose-bleed hills. Anyway, made it back in one piece. No aches, no detours, no dramas. I must thank Sharon for the en-route text entertainment though.

By the time we got to the hotel, the wedding party were mulling about. We were trying to disguise ourselves at the check-in, whilst the reception stared us up and down. We were slightly mucky with crazy hair.

Once we were cleaned and spruced up, we un-did all the good we had done by drinking copious amounts of Corona. Our legs were a little heavy, but we managed to dance all night. OK, it might have been more of a upper-body shuffle. By 10pm the energy burning run had taken it toll and Marco took out woman and children to get to the buffet. Watching him devour stovies and macaroni pies (only in Aberdeen) was not the romantic break I had in mind ;-) I won't even begin to list what he demolished for breakfast. Or explain his theory behind his "extra stomach when the food is free". Again, thus confirming his status as the fattest skinniest man I know.