powderach

Saturday 24th April 2021, 08:00 - 20:00

Pyllon Exposure was a new event for 2021; the brainchild of Paul Giblin and the team at Pyllon Ultra, who a lot of my friends train with. The concept was simple, but sounded tough. From the race website:

in order to complete the race you’ll have to commit to taking part for the full race period (6, 12, or 24 hours). However, you won’t know exactly what distance you have to run. Each hour of the event, we will reveal how many miles you will have to cover that hour. It’s then up to you to choose how fast you want to run - run hard and gain some rest time before the next hourly exposure? Pace it more carefully knowing that you’ll have to survive another 5, 10, or 20 hours?

Will signed up for 6 hours and I signed up for 12.

it's just a run

Lately I haven't wanted to run. First I blamed the weather. January and February were cold, windy, and dark. Melting snow made the low paths tough going. Deep soft snow in the hills made for tentative steps into the unknown. Sometimes I could dance across the snowy surface; other times I sank into thigh-deep snow.

Some photos from running and sliding in the snowy Pentlands over the last few weeks...

My one remaining race of the year - the North Downs 50 was finally cancelled due to the lockdown in England. In some ways this was a relief. I still hadn't worked out if I was going to run. Travelling to the south of England from Scotland felt like it might be irresponsible. The organisers - Centurion Running instead organised a virtual challenge for the week leading up to the race. I signed up to run 100 miles in the week.

I've run 100 mile weeks before when peak ultra training, but I'm definitely not in that shape at the moment! Here's how it went...

I've been mountain biking a lot this year and loving it. Bikepacking seemed like the perfect way to explore the Affric Kintail Way, a 44 mile trail from Drumnadrochit on Loch Ness to Morvich on the north west coast. Will's sister and her husband are experienced mountain bikers and have done a lot of bikepacking, so they lent us some bags for the bikes and gave us some tips! I'd naively thought we could carry all our gear in backpacks, but Mags and Adam explained that it's best to keep the weight on the bike to save your back and shoulders.