After a 5 day lay-off I was more than a little bit relieved to get out for an un-troubled 12 miler at the start of the Bank Holiday weekend. Nervous wasn’t the word as I deliberately kept close to the Cafe using a 6K loop to test the calf & give me bail out options should they be needed, thankfully they weren’t. This was followed up with a six miler on the Sunday & 14 miler on Monday. All trouble free but a visit to Iain Lea’s clinic on Friday reminded me that I am going to have to manage my calves a little better for a while at least. Understanding this I decided to give the Moel Eilio race a miss yesterday & instead volunteered to be a Marshall. Thankfully Jayne Lloyd had paired me with John on the summit of Eilio itself where it’s fabulous shelter was to prove very welcome. As Georg & I trod up through a relentless gale it was clear the runners were in for a real ‘treat’ & that was before the rain decided to come in with avengeance!

To give you an idea of just how bad it was up there many of the runners actually climbed over the style on the summit despite there being no fence to either side of it (poor visibility & the sheer effort required to fight uphill into the wind & rain had clearly blinded them to this)! Well done to all those who ran the race, a DNF for once was totally understandable & in reality quite sensible.

As for me my next race is a Half Marathon in Keswick next Saturday (part of the Keswick Mountain Festival), I will be begging Fraser for an early retreat from the pubs on Friday night & shooting any Pigs that might fly.