Where do I start with writing about my desire to attempt to cover 100 miles…

I say ‘cover’ as clearly I will not actually run all of them, I expect to hike a lot.

Also the race I hope to enter, and my back up one if I do not get a place, are both 95-96miles. Most people will think, if you run 95 miles why not just round it up and run 100miles? I hate these people, and my husband is one of them. He has a chronic ’round it up’ issue, I think it is due, in part, to Strava. Out on an easy 10k-ish run together this weekend, I finished at 9.4k or something, he had to round it up. But then he has a new dilemma, and needs to round the run up to 1 hour! However, yet another dilemma arises, he is now not at a satisfactory integer of either miles or kilometres*

So you see, I will cover probably 96 miles, but I am going to call in 100. It will take over 24 hours, but will probably call it a day as I will not sleep.

*I proposed a solution to Max’s dilemma. Run a total of 16km, but will the middle 10km hard and the remaining 3km either side as warm up and warm down timed to take 1.5hrs in total. Phew!

So where do I start?

I will start again at Milngavie train station, same as the Highland Fling Race, but at 1am June 23rd 2018 and then carry on non stop until Fort William, covering the entire West Highland Way in one go. As much as I would love to be able to do this in one day, just finishing in the time limit of 35 hours is the goal.

As you can guess from this blog the West Highland Way is a place I hold dear to my heart.  Max and I walked it as part honeymoon, part recovery from the PhDs. We then ran half of it in our first ultra-marathon in 2016, and then this year, 2017, we walked it with my family celebrating my Dad turning 60. Glasgow is the home of my family and Scotland a part of my history and upbringing, and I very much hope one day I will call Scotland home.

There is no other place where I would wish to go through hell, and hopefully, come through the other side!

To do the race, I need a crew (love that word, makes me think of rowing!). I will need friends and family to help me keep going, and to help keep me safe.

To do the race, I need to train. Focusing on strength, hiking and back-to-back long runs. We are thinking about doing these on the Pennine Way so we can finally finish it!

So why do it?

I saw a video on twitter of a single breath diver diving to the bottom of the worlds deepest man-made pool. There is a bit in the video where after diving down he peers over the edge to see an abyss below.  The dark tunnel disappears into the unknown. As the diver circles the edge I felt revulsion at the thought of going into that hole, sending yourself further from air.

It is a bit like this, but I am drawn in at the thought of the abyss, eager to discover how deep it is and how far I can go into it. In one single breath.