Supporting Millies (1)
How it started
It’s all the fault of one member of Milburn Harriers! Patricia Duffy turned 50 this year and wanted an appropriate occasion to mark the milestone. Most people attaining the big 50 get drunk, have a cake, party or massive holiday. Or threaten suicide. Or all of the above. That’s what Patricia did. Or worse. She told Jim Robertson.
Jim for those who have stumbled upon this blog is a repeater offender in the sado/masochistic sport that is ultra running. He has
“What’s this ‘we’ Kemo Sabay?” as Tonto allegedly said.
“Well, Jim and Christine and Ali and Geraldine. We do everything as a team.”
“OK. And we’ll rope in Steph and Jim who can form an A Team with Geraldine. They’ll do it no bother and the rest of us will give it as much as we can. It’ll be great fun.”
So all Millie Flingers can blame Patricia, and Jim, for what transpired over the winter. And for the pain, suffering, blasphemy, prayers, angel’s blessings. And the fun they had on Saturday 26th April 2008.
Over the winter, two separate training schedules were drawn up. One by Steph for the A team and the other by JR for the others. And they were adhered to religiously, to such an extent that when JR said a run would take most of the day, it did! And some of the night! And involved everything from walking, running, crawling, stargazing and, on that famous occasion rescue, by Lomond Mountain Rescue.
Only two members of this club within a club, Steph Johnston and the aforementioned JR, had any real experience of ultra running although all had completed a marathon and hill races. During the build-up, Jim Mckenzie and Geraldine Currie ran marathons, at Dumfries on 23rd March and
Steph is the club “hardman of the hills” and had run the Carnethy 5 during his preparation. I accompanied Steph and Jim on one of the early long runs. The first stage of the Fling, but in both directions Drymen - Milngavie- Drymen. The strategy of running the flat and downhills and walking the uphills had been decided on and seemed to be working for them although Jim had a touch of trouble with his knees.
On a later run with them they were both running well and I considered their chances of completing the race to be excellent. Mind you, they wimped off at 12 miles leaving me to do the last 10 of my final long run of marathon training by myself.
The following week Jim broke 4 hours for the
Geraldine and I had shared one early long run, just over 11 miles on the Balloch Horseshoe. That was on a very icy morning and at the top of the Horseshoe I happened to notice that her hair had frozen. She looked like the snow princess! Cold but dry, it was probably one of the better weather runs of her preparation. Occasionally taking off for cold weather training in Aviemore she stuck resolutely to her training.
Other runs that were important to their training were the increasingly longer runs on Tuesday nights where club runs normally reserved for the summer due to being pitch dark in winter became the norm and led to strange bruises as we ran into brick walls unseen in the darkness.
JR’s group meantime, began to turn up early on club nights and had about an hour of running under their belt before the rest of the club started. Mind you it led to some scary moments when we met on the country roads around the Vale!
And so the training went on, with worries over lack of training, lack of confidence and lack of sense being raised on regular occasions. Those of us sensible enough not to have entered were quick with advice about training schedules, offers to run on training sessions and amateur psychology (or was it Psychiatry?).
Soon a meeting was called for the final briefing……
Coming next in Supporting Millies (2)….
Peanut oil massage, soup, red wine and racing.
1 comment:
Good Blog Davie, although I'm more of a softee at heart
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