Eddie’s Blog

Yesterday I ran the Edinburgh Marathon, you can see the results here. One of the good things about these results is that they give split timings at the 10k and half-marathon distances as well as the full marathon. My split timings pretty much tell the story of my race: 58 mins 16 sec for the 10k distance (faster than the Glasgow 10k race I did in September 2007) and 2 hrs 15 mins for the half-marathon distance (not too far behind my time for the Glasgow half-marathon I did in September 2008). These are all great times for me, and I felt really good whilst running. Then it all turned in to a bit of a nightmare.

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My blog is exactly two years old today, and I’ve written a lot of stuff in that time, most of it very boring. I use this blog to keep a record of things I’m doing, to try and get my thoughts about a particular topic in some sort of logical order, or jotting down work-related musings for my own benefit. I have no idea how many people actually read it.

I spent last week attending a two-day first aid course at Lochore Meadows in Fife. It was a BASP (British Association of Ski Patrollers) course, but it was of quite a general nature and most of the course syllabus was applicable to everyday situations.

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I spent last week at Glenmore Lodge, near Aviemore on a Mountain Leader training course. This training course was the first part of the process of gaining the Mountain Leader Award qualification.

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Last year, I ran in the Great Scottish Run 10k race in Glasgow (see the previous blog posting ‘Great Scottish Run)’ and yesterday I ran in the Great Scottish Run again, this time doing the half-marathon (which was not surprisingly more difficult). My time was about 2 hours 7 minutes - incredible to think that Haile Gebrselassie ran a full marathon in 2007 in less time than this.

I spent last weekend in Witney in Oxfordshire at Lesley’s sister’s wedding, and on the journey back to Scotland we stopped off to go for an excellent curry in Manchester’s famous ‘Curry Mile‘. We also went to the Peak District and went for a walk on Kinder Scout. This hill was the site of the ‘Mass Trespass‘ of 1932, an event for which all hillwalkers in Britain should be thankful for. We walked on a 12km circular route from Hayfield along the western edge of the summit plateau that took us about 3.5 hours. Lesley has written a blog entry about the weekend here.

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This morning I ran in the Great Scottish Run in Glasgow, doing the 10k race. My time was about 65 minutes - Kenenisa Bekele ran 10k in 26 minutes in 2005, so I have some way to go.

I’ve never run in a race like this before and I was very surprised at the number of people who were walking the route, right from the start - maybe calling it a run is a bit misleading…

Oh, and I got a sendoff from Jimmy Savile at the start!

After attending the wedding of Lesley’s friend Lindsay last Friday (at which Ewan McGregor’s dad was also apparently at; Lesley’s blog entry about the wedding is here), Lesley and I travelled to southern England for a few days. We stayed one night in Bristol, where we attended Lesley’s cousin’s 40th birthday party (highlight for me was the whole pig cooked on a spit roast), and two nights at her sister’s house in Witney, near Oxford. We also took the opportunity to view a lot of the sights in that part of England (pictures here).

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I’ve just finished reading Brooklyn Follies, the most recent novel by Paul Auster, and whilst it’s an enjoyable read, it’s not really comparable to Auster at his best. With his last three books, Auster seems to be heading away from the mystical and mind-bending themes he is so justly renowned for, and which find perhaps their purest form in the The New York Trilogy and Mr Vertigo.

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Two recent BBC news articles about ‘Munro-bagging’ have only served (at least in my mind) to accentuate the utter craziness of this activity. Munros are mountains in Scotland higher than 3000ft, and attempting to climb them all has acquired the term ‘bagging’. The very concept of a Munro is one that makes no sense even with a cursory thought - endless debates can be had about how many of these strange objects there actually are in reality and whether or not Munro-bagging is an activity that sensible people should undertake at all (as opposed to normal, straightforward hillwalking).

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