Devilling Around

After i finished i just lay on grass in sunshine and drank a much needed cold bottle of water, quickly followed by the best ice lolly ever (thanks Lynn!) and finished off with a post fuel drink from my wonderful support one man band. Was great to catch up and find out how everyone had done. Andy & Mike stormed home and were on a high! see above cheesy grin, he was even doing a wee highland fling!

We sat and clapped and cheered everyone in and drank wine & beer in sunshine, great stuff. Popped along to presentation, had quick bite to eat but couldn't stomach much, tried to offload it on Ian but he went in search of his own plate. Checked into Lodge and screamed a bit in shower at my chaffed back :( Phil fell asleep on top bunk snoring and me & Anna chatted away and laughed at him :)

George txt to say *meet in dining room in 10mins* ffs! i hadnt ever dried my hair! So we were bit late as 3 of us tried to get dressed and hair dried in teeny space. (bloody bunkhouses!)Phil took longest, fixing his hair, deciding what to wear .....By then George has tcxt back to say *we're in pub round corner* & before long we were too.

Cue a night of much hilarity (mainly down to Simon, lol@ squash racquet's) and mucho wine. Great night with great friends. Up in morning for one last rollcall for huge breakfast downstairs with grumpy cow of a waitress. Lots of hugs goodbye and we set off for home.

We decided to stop off in Tyndrum for a drink, only to run into these tourists ;)

Out of all the SUMS races so far this year i think i found the Devil the hardest. Not entirely sure why. I found it waay tougher than the Fling, but then i trained lots on the route, I'd only done minimal training on upper half, perhaps it was that?

Weirdly enough looking back on my training when i logged it on Fetch, i was quicker pace wise! in fact the fling was my slowest pace race (well if you don't count D33 & Clyde & GEDM which are all flatter)

Mind you i recovered pretty quickly, slight stiffness on Sunday and fine by Monday. Maybe i just didn't try hard enough? Was running to work by Tuesday.

So upshot is that it would appear I'm getting quicker over that terrain and distance, yet i felt much slower. All i know is it's now time to up the ante and get proper fit for next year. I would like to lose bit weight before as I'm hoping that'll help a bit. And I'll be doing a many training runs in as i possibly can, even if it's solo ones, i might just take off on a whim and go run for couple days.

And i really really need to get to gym do do some weights,i just need the bloody kick up arse to do it! ideally I'd like a personal trainer to kick me into shape, even just once a week but cant afford it. Hey ho.

Next up, Speyside. I'm going to try and not come 42nd as I've just looked at results and I've come 42nd in 3 of the ultras, and 24th in one (less runners tho) weird or what?

Are 4 + 2 lucky numbers? we'll see