Hoka Highland Fling

Let’s get one thing very clear straight off the bat –the Fling is brilliant. Impeccably organised, brilliantly marshalled and supported, beautiful, challenging, friendly, reasonably priced and generally full of awesome. I could not recommend this race highly enough and thank you to everyone involved. And although it’s a long way, anyone with the desire is capable of doing this. I’m a pretty ordinary guy and I did it.

Without wanting to bore you with full details training had gone well. A marathon pb in the borders marathon, a couple of 30 mile runs in the Lammermuir hills and improving 5 and 10k times were good. A strong performance in the shambolic St Andrews half (a kind of anti-fling in terms of the organisation) 2 weeks before race day had me feeling good, and a tune up at Burnley parkrun the weekend before was probably both risky and unnecessary but there you go.

Logistics had meant I spent no time on the course so it was all a surprise to me. It seemed pretty straightforward and as a precaution I had programmed the route onto my Ambit together with the helpful notes that appear on the maps on the fling website. But I was fairly sure I’d be middle of the pack and be able to follow someone most of the time.

For food I made 4 drops bags. Although these may look like biryani, jalfrezi, rogan josh and bhuna, they actually all contained 2 gels, 2 jaffa cakes, sesame snaps, Bombay mix, a babybel and some haribo. Cp3 had apple juice and cp4 full fat coke.

I spent the night before staying with friends (Julie and Ian) in Carluke which is vaguely near the start line.  Their support was invaluable as Julie kindly got up at 4 to drive me to the start and came back to pick me up later. I can’t say I slept well with being in a strange bed and pre race nerves but I always tell myself that the night before doesn’t matter, this is true as long as I can believe it.

Pre race hydration

The forcast was for rain and plenty of it. I was unsure what to wear. I had bought a montane minimus jacket the week previously, it’s a golden rule of ultra running not to wear something you hadn’t trained with, but it didn’t look like there was much choice. I had a bottle belt with a small pouch to fit the mandatory kit (phone and foil blanket) and not much else so if the jacket was coming I was wearing it, as I had no way carry it. I had road shoes (brooks ghost 6) not having any trail shoes this was an easy choice, but I still spent the weeks running up to the race worrying, especially with the forecast rain. As it turned out they were fine. I had a long sleeved top, Dunbar club vest and socks by Primark, and a Dunbar buff.

Registering was a doddle. I even managed to swap my foil blanket for a smaller one. This is the kind of marginal gain you need to look for as a top class runner like myself. I met Neil and Lee from Dunbar who were running the relay and race respectively and some guys from Haddington who were full of useful advice.

Soon it was time for the briefing, and then we went to line up. I was feeling ready to go.

The start

Ready to go

I started a long way back. I didn’t want to get sucked along too fast for the early stages. It was pretty busy along the trails at the start, and I felt sorry for clubmate Lee who was trying to pick his way through after missing the start being in the toilet.

Much of the early section blurs into one. There was someone playing a violin which was nice, and I was surprised at how small the hills had to be in order for everyone to walk, but I wasn’t arguing with the wisdom of the herd and happily walked too. There were two big hills on the horizon (Slackdhu and Dungoyne) I was concerned we would have to go over these. Thankfully not. The route went through a section with a lot of gates and everyone bunched up so I just fell in with the group. As we came onto the road the two guys in front of me were talking and I couldn’t help overhear one say to the other “most of these people have gone off way too fast”. At first I thought he had a bit of a cheek, but then realised he was probably right and slowed down and let the big group go and felt much happier. Whoever you were thanks for this unintended pacing advice.

At Drymen - photo Stuart Macfarlane

The water station at Drymen came pretty soon, it was nice to hear a cheery “Come on Dunbar” from the Haddington relay teams. Even with my lack of knowledge of the route I knew there was a big hill coming next. Thankfully the mist obscured it so I couldn’t see the full extent of Conic hill. In some ways this was good I just took one step at a time, in others it was bad because every time it levelled out I kept thinking “is that it – that wasn’t too bad” Only to be confronted with more uphill. I walked pretty much all of the uphill, chatting with Paddy from Haddington, a veteran of many Flings.

It was pretty obvious when we got to the top as the mist began to lift and the view of Loch Lomond began to emerge this felt like quite a special moment – I’d never seen the Loch previously and had yet to realise what a beautiful place it is. Remembering the advice from one of the Haddington guys at the start I took it steady on the descent. You really do lose a lot of height very quickly and it would be very easy to damage your quads, or slip and take a tumble. And it’s too early in the race for that. I can’t have looked too serious as I stopped to take a photo and the pro photographer asked me if I was in the race or not.

Loch Lomond emerges from the mist

At the end of the steep descent there’s a really nice section through the forest and down to the first checkpoint at Balmaha. I was here in 3 hours 26. I had no plan and no idea I was just happy to be here. It felt like the first bit was out of the way and now the race proper was getting started physically and mentally I felt fine and up for the challenge.

Looking back I went faster through this early section than I did later. Partly this is just because the section is so much more runnable and coupled with the freshness of the legs there is a need to make hay while the sun shines. At the same time I felt I’d run within myself and resisted the urge to go too fast. One learning would be that I didn’t have enough food for this section. I had one cereal bar and two gels I could have done with more – this was the only time in the race I felt worried about food.

At the checkpoint I ate my Bombay mix and babybel and jaffa cakes. All went down pretty well. I took haribo and gels with me and off I went. I stopped for about 5 mins. Part of this was because in my zeal to make my drop bags waterproof, I had sealed them tighter then fort knox and they took a bit of getting into.

Now all I had to run the length of Scotland’s largest loch, and then a bit more and it was job done. All I was doing was focussing on getting to Rowardennan.

The bit along the loch has three checkpoints. The one at Balmaha that I was just leaving, the one at Rowardennan that I was aiming for, and one at Inversnaid.

Much of the route between these is indistinguishable in my memory from the other bits. I ran on, sometimes next to the road sometimes on good tracks and sometimes on very poor tracks and at one point on a sandy beach. The race had thinned out, but there are always people around, I remember chatting to a few people. Especially the two guys with the 11 hour plan, it was nice to know that I was on some kind of plan, even if it was someone else’s. I’d heard a lot about how hard the hard bits of the lochside were, the bits beyond Inversnaid, where the path was a knarled, twisted mass of rocks, tree roots, misery and broken dreams. However no one had prepared me for how hard the easier bits were.

Somewhere on the Lochside - photo Stuart Macfarlane

There are a lot of nasty climbs in this section and I confirmed the sneaking suspicion I’d had on conic hill that everyone was better at walking than I was. I lost lots of places on the long endless climb out of Rowardennan. If I come back, top of the training list will be some hill walking as this was one area it was immediately apparent I could improve. This was probably the lowest point of the race for me, I felt like it was never ending and was taking a lot of effort for little reward. But sometimes I got chatting to people and as ever this distraction really helps.

Also whoever maintains the paths had had a canny idea in advance of the fling. Instead of resurfacing the paths, lets just dump piles of stones along the route and hope that 600 passing runners will compact them into a path. This plan didn’t seem to be working and the piles of stones were a pain.

The actual bad bit after Inversnaid was everything people say it is. Difficult to run on, slippy, muddy and requiring a certain amount of scrambling. Again I was slow – I never practice this kind of thing, and found myself frequently letting people pass, but at the same time the slow pace allows time to regroup which was nice.

A nice runnable section

The whole section along the lochside feels like a dream, the checkpoints are all jumbled in my head. At one (Inversnaid) there was John Kynaston, whose voice is very familiar from his excellent West Highland Way podcasts. I didn’t want any of my food at this point so I popped it all on the swap shop table for discarded and unwanted drop bag contents and scavenged myself a mullerrice. This was another golden rule of ultra running broken, as I don’t think I’d ever eaten a mullerrice before, let alone while running. But my body (perhaps unsurprisingly) seemed to want something carb heavy, I didn’t have a spoon though so had to drink it. I also had apple juice here which was awesome and something I’d really looked forward to, but it left a really nasty aftertaste that took a while to fade.

I really can’t remember much about what I ate at Rowardennan perhaps just cheese, maybe jaffa cakes too.

After leaving the loch the path went up and got muddier, I fell in with a big group here which got me moving quite well for a while and I was trying to hang on until the final checkpoint at Beinglas. But in the end I had to let them go it was just too fast. The checkpoint never seemed to come and we were giving up all our hard earned height. In the end I caught the guy in front to ask if he knew where the checkpoint was. He said it was just round the corner and 30 seconds later there we were.

Neil from my running club was here after running the first leg of the relay and it was nice to see a friendly face. I also had coke to look forward to here. It doesn’t seem to matter how long I leave the bottle open for in advance of the race to defizz it, it never works. Still the fizziness didn’t bother me too much and the drink tasted like nectar. I forced down a sesame snap here which was an effort. These were the only thinks I liked during the Clyde Stride but they were not working here. I grabbed some haribo and sensing there was nothing to be gained by hanging around I was off. I had 3 hours 20 to make the 13 miles to the finish in under 12 and I sensed it could be done.

Leaving Beinglas I was fairly sanguine about what was in store. It was a long hard uphill slog to the finish, another 13 miles. Just a half marathon. I quickly started to run after the checkpoint my mind somehow tricking my tired legs into running, I walked the uphills, still getting passed by people but ran OK on the downs and the flats. It kept starting to rain, as I’d had my jacket annoyingly tied round my waist all day I never missed an opportunity for it to justify its existence so kept putting it on. Only for it to stop raining, this inverse rain dance served myself and the other runners well in keeping us dry.

It was at this point I slipped on the steps up to a bridge incurring my only real injury of the day as I scraped my shin.

The path wound on, through a small tunnel under the railway line where I had to crouch to fit through and up a steep hill. Then levelled out onto an undulating stony path with some spectacular views, ruined only by the occasional festering pit of cow shit, ankle deep in places. Apparently the farmer does this on purpose to revenge himself on the world for the miserable existence he must have in this idyllic corner of Scotland, maybe someone stole his coke in a previous fling, or is fed up of tescos screwing him on milk prices, or he could just be grumpy. Still it couldn’t be fully avoided, and I was glad I didn’t try after seeing a guy at the finish who had injured himself trying to go around the steep bank. My boss (another cheery soul) made the valid point that this just proves its real, and isn’t the kind of thing you can do in a golf cart, which I suppose is right, but doesn’t help my still uncleaned shoes, or my poor thrown away primark socks.

On into the forest. This was probably my favourite bit I knew I was going to do it (I’d kind of always known but could now let myself believe it) and I knew I was going under 12 hours. So I was running well. This section is the nearest I’ve ever experienced to the runners high, everything felt good. I had to reign myself in not to try and run the uphills. I moved through the field passing a few people and leaving behind the guy in the blue jacket who had been close by since Beinglas. I put on some music, I don’t know if this helped to distract me, I think my brain was pleased to have something else to think about.

On the last descent to the road two guys came flying past me at impressive speed. I told them how impressed I was and tried to hold on but couldn’t. Imagine my surprise when we hit the flat and I reeled them back in and passed them - I was feeling good. People were telling me I was nearly there. I started to believe them and my strength and good feeling began to ebb away. My strong running was still 11m/m pace and 'nearly there' was still around 3 miles, over half an hours running to go.

I kept asking everyone how far to go. I got quite conflicting answers, so I carried on. I thought about whether I’d try to defend my position if anyone came. I decided not to minutes later when I heard someone come up behind me running strongly. I just stepped off the path and let her go. Just as I came into By the Way I passed a lady in a white top who I’d seen a few times since before Beinglas. She seemed in a bad way, I offered to walk in with her to ensure she was OK. I was half disappointed when she insisted I should go on, the valid excuse to walk would have been welcome. I left her my water and ran on, luckily I almost immediately met a marshall so I was confident she would be looked after.

You could really sense the end now. People were around with that look of satisfaction that only comes from finishing the race, then there was the sound of the piper. Not always the most welcome sound to my untrained English ear, but very welcome this time. Round the corner and onto the red carpet and the flags, great support and the great thing is there is no one else around – for a moment in what is a hugely collaborative event it’s all about me and I’m hugely grateful to all the people giving up their time to make it special. I manage a ‘sprint’ and cross the line. Done 11:32 mins.

Happy at the finish - photo Stuart Macfarlane

A medal is put round my neck, and I’m given a great goody bag before being asked lager or ale. Well I think lager is the way to go after a long hard day on the trials.

I catch up with a few people at the finish. Clubmate Lee is there having got in in 10:50, and it’s nice to see people you recognise from the trail come in.

The soup is delicious. I try to watch the prize giving but I’m getting cold so I go off for a shower. I can’t pretend I didn’t scream like a little girl when the water hit the chafed bits of me. I’ve never chafed too badly before so this was a shock. But it was great to be clean and the pain ensured I stayed on my feet for the next few hours.

It was great to stand for a few hours and clap people in. Neil brought me a glass of wine which went down well, and I had a baked potato which didn’t, and then Lee gave me whisky, which did. The finish of an ultra is always an inspiring place to be.

Team Dunbar

Then on the bus and back. My wife had a good laugh at everyone trying to climb down the steps as we got off in Milngavie, apparently we looked non too graceful.

A few days later I feel fine. I have two black toenails but no other ill effects, but I can’t quite shake the feeling of the race – it’s something that stays with you.