Loch Ness Marathon - Sunday 2 October 2005

[El Gordo]

Hi Tim

Welcome to our small-but-beautiful community.....

Thanks for the Loch Ness reassurance - I've not yet heard anything bad about this race.

I'm sure I'll be doing plenty more urban races (injuries/old age permitting) but I have started to feel a hankering for something wilder. I don't need any persuasion about the aesthetics of running off-road, but my main problem is that I'm a pretty crap runner, so I have to build up to the hard core hilly stuff.

I loved the clamour of Hamburg, but it did make me see a couple of things. One was that it would be interesting to experience the complete opposite - relative remoteness and silence. Another was that my legs might not have seized up if they were stronger, which in turn led me to accept that I didn't run enough hills. Put together, something like Loch Ness was the answer. Rural and scenic, but still a well-organised/marshalled event on roads that I couldn't get lost on. In the approach to Hamburg, I'd pencilled in the Combe Gibbet-Overton 16 miler but decided against it at the last minute. Thought it might have been too much 2 weeks before the marathon.

Yes, I'm interested in sampling some of the off-beat races you mention (not that I've heard of any of those in particular, to be honest), but I need to work my way up to them. I'm a few chapters into "Feet In The Clouds" by Richard Askwith - a brilliant evocation of fell running. I'm sure you'll have read it. If not, do pick it up. It's just come out in paperback.

What other marathons have you done?

I hope you'll stick around. (For people who don't know, Tim is a big cheese at uk.rec.running. Well worth a visit.)

Cheers

Andy