Monday 5 October 2009

River Ness 5K Cont'd

As promised, here's more about the weekend.

Karen (one of the girls I work with) picked me up on Saturday afternoon and we headed up to Inverness. On the way, we stopped off in Dalwhinnie for a snack break. While we were sitting in the car, I noticed the sign "Dalwhinnie: Twinned with Las Vegas". The two places couldn't be more dissimilar. Dalwhinnie is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere that basically consists of a small pub-hotel and a petrol station. I'm not sure how decisions are made on which places to twin, but this twinning seemed particularly ironic.

We got to Inverness just before 4pm and unfortunately missed the final boat tour of Loch Ness for the day. So instead, we just drove along the loch and checked out some of the local tourist shops. People come to Inverness from all over the world for the Baxters Loch Ness Marathon so there were lots of interesting people to meet.

Saturday night we loaded up on pasta at Bella Italia and then headed back to the B&B for an early night.

Sunday morning the plan was to drop me off at the starting point for the 5k (my race started first) and then for the rest of them to head to the 10K starting point. Unfortunately, we lost our bearings and were heading to the wrong starting point. Finally got ourselves sorted out (the GPS feature on my phone, which I hardly ever use came in handy at more than one point that weekend).

The race itself went well. There was a bit of an incline for the last kilometer and I hadn't really done any training on inclines so I was getting pretty tired by that point. I kept thinking of what Thom used to tell me when we ran for the bus nearly every day of high school - "Don't think about being tired, just put one foot in front of the other". It was good advice, Thom. When I made the turn into the stadium there was one of the running marshalls telling us it was just 100m to the finish line. There were lots of people along the sides of the track cheering you on so it did give a bit of a second wind. There was a company there taking pictures of everyone as they crossed the finish line. Click here for a link
Just after the finish line you get your medal, T-shirt, banana, water, and goody bag.

After I finished my race, I went around checking out all the different stalls in the stadium. There were tents where you could get food, check out the charities that were being supported by the runners, buy really expensive running gear, and listen to different bands. There was even a historic re-enactment group there that gave the crowd a scare when they unexpectedly fired off one of their guns while rehearsing. I then headed back to the side of the track and watched everyone else come in. I got talking to the lady beside me. Her name was Melinda and she was from Santa Barbara, California. Her husband was doing his first marathon and they'd combined that with a vacation in Scotland.

The trip back to Dundee was pretty uneventful except for the deer that dashed across the road in front of us. Thankfully, it was far enough away that we didn't hit it.

Here's a link to the rest of the pictures from the weekend:

River Ness 5K

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