The highlander mountain marathon took place earlier in the month over towards Gairloch. This is a fantastic event which is much more chilled out than either the LAMM or the OMM. Unfortunately the only year I have competed in it coincided with the worst weather they had experienced. It took months for my feet to thaw out so I have never been back to race. Rather than taking part I had the task of marshalling at one of the checkpoints on the first day at Poca Buidhe bothy.
I biked in using the track from the Gairloch road, with only a couple of irritatingly locked gates, and in about an hour I reached the the start of the loch, where I ditched the bike to bag the easternmost Corbett on the way to the bothy checkpoint. The bothy has one open end and despite the amount of mice droppings looked in pretty good nick. I was glad to be sunning myself and enjoyed fantastic views to the back of Liatach and Beinn Alligin. The checkpoint was busier than expected and everyone was having a great time, including those who seemed to be massively late.
As the last team went through I headed west to grab in the other Corbett, involving a rather scary traverse line as I tried to avoid some height gain, before biking back to the car. The track back was tough on my fully rigid rather retro Cannondale, but I cleaned it all despite having a touch of double vision and knackered arms by the end of it.
The same day we headed down to Wales for a week long marilyn bagging trip and a couple of days in North Wales checking out some more sections of Paddy Buckley. I had one long day running the leg from Capel Curig to Aberglaslyn in unseasonably hot weather. Despite the heat I was running it well within schedule and enjoyed it for the most part. I was shattered at the end of the run though, but still had energy to check out the start of the next leg - sorting out a route finding issue I had had last time I was there.
After a chilly night in the car I did part of the Snowdon leg, through Llanberis and then up through the quarries to Eildir Fawr. I ballsed up the slate mines badly and spent a good bit of time wandering around the inclines. The end result was I missed the schedule time by a good 10 minutes and lost motivation to go on to the Glyders. Probably a good thing in hindsight as my legs were burnt enough as it was. All in all another successful reccy and I just need to get a few more long runs under my belt and get down to Wales again to check out the Glyders and Carneddau sections. Paddy Buckley's Round seems to be a hybrid of Ramsay's and Bob Graham's Round - a superb mixture of rough ground like Ramsay's but also with long sections of really fun undulating ridges like the Bob. I am really looking forward to giving it a go.
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