What This Blog Is About

This blog is about a run from John O'Groats to Lands End I plan to do in June 2009. It is about the planning and preparation, the execution, the aftermath. It is also about the one man show partly based on the run which I will be performing at the Edinburgh Festival in August 2009.

The run will be unsupported which means I won't have a van and a backup team. I'll be on my own. I also want to run mostly cross-country rather than on road. And that means the total distance covered will be upwards of a thousand miles.

Just now, ten weeks before the start of the big run, I'm feeling OK about my physical fitness. Last week I ran 120 miles, two ten milers a day for six days. My resting heart rate is usually around 40 beats per minute and all last week when I took my pulse first thing in the morning it was always in the low forties. That means my cardiovascular fitness is looking pretty good. About four weeks ago I had to take a week off running because both of my achilles tendons were swollen and hurting. Now, after a week of heavy running, other than a slight twinge in my left achilles tendon and general muscle soreness in my thighs, my joints, connective tissues and muscles feel pretty robust.

In terms of logistical preparation I know roughly what I will be carrying with me. I have my lightweight tent and sleeping bag I used on last summer's run from Inverness to Glasgow.

Because of weight considerations I won't be carrying with me the maps which a walker would consider essential. I still have to research and make a decision about GPS technology.

I haven't planned the route in detail. But I do know some things. For a number of reasons I have decided to start at John O'Groats. This is mainly because I know the route between Inverness and Glasgow very well. I have walked and ran that route, both northwards and southwards, a number of times and at different dates between April and July so that's 170 miles I feel confident about. Getting from John O'Groats to Inverness shouldn't be difficult and south of Glasgow I plan to follow the 40 miles of the Clyde Walkway as far as New Lanark. I haven't walked that route but I do know the area; it's where I grew up. So if I start at the top I feel relatively confident about not getting too far lost for the first 250 miles or so. That's about a quarter of the whole run so a good chunk to start with.

Food is a big challenge. If you want to run you can't carry very much. I had a rule on the Inverness Glasgow run last year not to carry more than two tins of food at a time. That meant relying a lot on finding food along the road in shops and pubs and so on. Very often I couldn't find the kind of food I wanted or needed and had to make do with whatever was available. There's a huge difference between a breakfast of porridge and a breakfast of sausages if you plan to run fifteen miles before lunch. I didn't carry a camping stove last summer because of the weight but I may do this year. Again I haven't decided yet.

So far I've been training without a pack. I'm going to have to start carrying one soon. I need a new bag but I don't know how big or how much I want to spend. I saw one I wanted in a shop today but managed to stop myself making an impulse purchase. I have a strong feeling I'm going to get it this week.

Anyway, there's a whole bunch of stuff to think about and prepare. In part, the blog is about having a space where I can think out loud about how the preparation is going. I welcome comments and observations, by the way. I have done a fair amount of trekking and running in some fairly rugged places but this is by far the biggest thing I have attempted so I'm open to suggestions. And questions.

That's it for the moment. More later. I'll go into some of the issues I've mentioned briefly above in more detail.