I've decided just to focus on one run for this week's post. The reason being it stands head and shoulders above the rest because things happened which still give me a buzz today.
Usually myself and Alex go on our own run round Gogarburn. However this week one of the guys who we know from one of the other departments invited us to join him on a 4 mile run to celebrate one of his colleagues 50th birthday. He is based in the center of Edinburgh, so we got the all clear from our boss to work there for the day so we could join the run too. He was hoping to get 50 people but I think we got between 15 and 20 which is still a good number.
In preparation for the run, I was thinking it would just be a social run. But as we were walking to the start point and got chatting to folk it became clear the word 'race' kept coming up. I was starting to think maybe I shouldn't have done the club session the previous night but whats done is done. My legs were stiff but I was in good spirits and looking forward to the run.
Due to it being just a low key thing, I had no idea what the route was apart from that it was near the Water of Leith for a lot of it and I have never been down that way before. Most of the guys running yesterday go out running quite a lot so knew it. Therefore I tried to make sure I had at least someone in view all the time.
We had a timer who set us off and it wasn't long before we hit the paths along the Water of Leith. When things started to spread out, I was running along in fourth place, trying to keep 3rd place in view. It was kind of an out and back route with a loop round the roads at the turn. At this point I caught up with 3rd place and he told me where to go. Even then I had to turn around to check with him if I was going in the right direction. After a bit we started chatting and put positions to the back of my mind. Turns out it was Ian King who has run the West Highland Way race! wow, what are the chances? We ran all the way to the finish together coming in the same time and joint 3rd. He then introduced me to second place. Who was another WHWR veteran Keith Hughes. Only an ultra runner can be modest when he said he'd ran it 7 times. In fact in 2009 he ran the race then ran the Great Glen Way afterwards. In 2010 you can read my previous post to see what he did. There was one women so she won the women's race. The winners got champagne and we enjoyed free soup and cakes while having a post race analysis.
Who won? How about Pentlands Skyline course record holder Andy Kitchen! Turns out he was sitting 2 desks away from me yesterday and of course I had no idea. I'm glad I wasn't sitting next to him as I would have got no work done finding out all about his running.
Overall a great run, with a sound bunch of people along a very scenic route.
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