Anyway, I explained (on the shared document - not to her face or anything) that largely she had possessed me to run that fast - it was the conversation about not relying on the garmin so much, which had made me use it less, and find my own pace. She wasn't too displeased though - she herself said "after that minor bollocking - I can now revise your final time down to 2:08" which was good news for everyone apart from Hannah, who deliberately picked 2:15 on the sweepstake on the grounds that I'd do what Sal told me. Judy is now in with a sporting chance at the sweepstake.
On Friday, I had to travel all day to get to the wedding (and the sand) that is the big event of this weekend. Ideally I would have packed on Thursday night, but I've never been one for turning down opportunities, (or "saying No"), so when Pete asked me if I'd like a spare ticket to see John Cooper Clarke, I of course accepted. I forgot at the time that I had already agreed to give some feedback on a workshop I attended about directing, which was technically at the same time. However, I found out that there was a warm-up act on before JCC was on, and I figured out, that as they are friends of mine whose work I've often supported, I'd probably heard the majority of it before, and I could skip from one to the other, arriving at the interval. This is just what happened. He was very funny, although part of what was engaging about him was that he was completely off his face, and a lot more tired jokes were delivered than actual poetry. From a lot of people, this would have been irritating, but, well, he was very likeable. We forgave him. And laughed. Then there was an option to go to the pub with theatre Dave and Jonni, and I thought, packing, it's pretty easy. I can do that later. So I went, and of course that was good fun, and I got some feedback on the Crucible. It's funny when you realise that people have no idea how much preparation you've put into something. Anyway, it's probably my fault for making light of it in fora like... this one. So, I got home at 1am, and realised that if I didn't catch up on the drama series I'd been following on iplayer, I'd have missed it by the time I got back from Scotland, so I sat down and watched and hour of French police drama. Because that was smart. I set the alarm clock for the remaining 5 hours of night time.
In the morning, I packed, apparently most of my earthly goods, and was just about to set out to the station at a startlingly early 9 am (for the 9:45 train) when I realised I hadn't packed my bolero cardigan, which had vanished. The time spend tidying was wasted, as a tornado swept through my bedroom and uncovered it just as I was about to give up, in the first pile of cloths I'd looked through 4 times already. Damn poltergeist. 9:15 and just time to get a taxi. Just as well, considering I now had a handbag, a plastic bag with wedding gift and fascinator, a backpack and a huge suitcase. It really doesn't matter how long I go away for, a couple of days or a month, I take the same amount of stuff. In this case I think there were mitigating circumstances: going to the North coast of Scotland during an Indian Summer that is bound to end at any moment, you have to pack for all eventualities.
The journey was startlingly uneventful (I ended up telling a German lady about this blog, which she described as being quite a story, but I don't remember why. Excitingly, she had also been locked on a train, and hers, if you can imagine, was worse than mine. She'd got her 3 children, two toddlers and a baby, off the train, and had got back on for her luggage when the doors locked. Can you imagine?). The timing for my recommended route was rather tight, in my opinion, with 10 minutes at Edinburgh and only 6 in Inverness, which I thought showed a startling optimism from the train companies. Considering that we left Newcastle running ten minutes late, for example. Many people would have spent a lot of time stressing about this, but I was resigned to my fate. I once spent 2 hours stressing because my train was 30 minutes late and I was going to miss my onward connection in Crewe: but when I reached Crewe, the connecting train was 30 minutes late too, and I felt I'd wasted all that stress. So i resolved to not stress about things I could do nothing about. In keeping with this, I was glad not have bothered stressing, because the train made up all ten minutes by the time we reached Edinburgh, and the connection was flawless. It wasn't the same platform I'd got locked on the train previously, so not too many flashbacks.
When I arrived at Keith, Sophie launched herself out of the car in paroxysms of excitement. She may easily be top of my fan list (my fans tend to be mainly in the under-15 category. I try not to think about the male over-50 category, they border between fans and stalkers). I was staying with Susie's friend Evelyn and family (including Sophie), who I'd been reacquainted with at the hen party, and it was great to have such an offer. When you don't know many folk at a wedding, it's so nice to feel a welcome, and let me tell you, no one gives a welcome like a Cullen welcome. As soon as I'd arrived and settled in, we were off down the road for our tea, where Susie was also with the family, and friends soon congregated around. Brenda was doing stirling work and gave us a fantastic dinner as well as taking drinks orders with startling efficiency - and frequency. I was semi-comatose before I had the glass of wine, and that certainly didn't help. The Scottish accent was doing that thing to my brain, and the lack of concentration really didn't help. Susie's dad Jimmie, and Evelyn's dad Alec were my two biggest challenges. They seemed so friendly, and I swear, I never understood one word of what they'd said. Alec was in the back room when I arrived, which was as well because as I was explaining I'd never met him, Jimmie said "Aye, ken ye ha'." "Sorry?" I said. "Aye, d'ye no' recall at Susie's movin' in t'the flat? Alec n Joan were theer then?" "Sorry?" I said. "Ye'll know im when ye set eyes on him" he assured me, "once seen, niver forgotten". Once I'd grasped the gist of this, about ten minutes later, I was able to place the pieces together. "No, I don't remember Alec, Jimmie, in fact I only remember one thing about that night: the measure of whisky you poured out for me. After that, I don't remember anything." His face cracked into a grin. "Aye, that were a good night" he said.
I was very good, and resisted any further alcohol that night, for the simple reason that I'd told Sal I could train on Saturday morning and not on Sunday, when I was planning on having something of a hangover (I hadn't spelled that out). So I didn't want to stuff that up by having a hangover on Saturday as well. And everyone was brilliant, helping me find a route. "You want to go across the viaduct, across to Portknockie" they told me, "that's about 4 miles". I later found out that it was 4 or 5 miles round trip, which wasn't quite long enough, but Bruce, (Sarah's Bruce, or the other Bruce, as I think of him) told me that I could pick up the old rail track the other side and keep going. Everyone was very kind, but I recognised the look on their faces - because it's been on my face enough times. "Whatever you're doing that for" is the subtext. I could tell they didn't quite get it by the numbers of cups of tea and breakfast I was offered "while I was over". At about 11pm, when I was getting the shutty-eye-lid thing going on, Susie made a move to leave. If she's going, I reasoned, I can go too. Unfortunately, the whole party simply moved to Jimmie's house. I felt it would have been rude to go to Jimmie's without having some whisky, so I made it very clear that I only wanted a tiny nightcap. "Aye, alright" he said. He came back with half a tumbler full. "Jimmie, I said small!" Everyone else in the room agreed that as Jimmie-measures went, that WAS small. I didn't finish it, and the pain in Jimmie's eyes was palpable. "Yer not the same lassie I remember. She wouldna' ha' left whisky in the glass" he said, sadly. He was right. It's also amazing the way I could understand him, after even a small measure. "I learned a lot at university" I told him.
The aim of the run was 75 minutes, negative split, (or, running the second half faster than the first half). What I found out was that the route was quite hilly, so I had some built-in fartleks in addition. It seemed to me, perversely, that I was going to have a fair bit of hill on the way back as well, which was quite bad news, given I'd be running it faster. I set out at a comfortable 10:30 to 11 minute mile. And it was nice, actually, although distressingly nothing like the google maps satellite image. I'm not sure what time of year you have to come to see sea that colour.
Anyway, that's the distance I ran - from Cullen to Findochty (that's the web link incase you want to zoom in), which turned out to be 4 miles. And there was a handy sign when I got to Findochty (which incidentally, as if having unpronounceable names wasn't bad enough, is actually pronounced "Fin-ECHT-y" which gives you an idea of what I'm up against here) which looked like this:
and that was how I knew it was time to go back.
Sure enough, the way back was more up hill, and I made a special effort to run faster on the uphill bits because I was afraid of losing speed on them, and think I had something of the reverse going on. I noticed that there was a beautiful very slight downward gradient as I approached the viaduct from the other side, which helped enormously. Peterborough should be more like that. Sadly, my sprint-finish was uphill again. It had to be good training, we don't get built-in fartleks around the Peterborough circuit like that.
Then, once I'd got my breath back, it was time to get ready for the wedding lunch. I guess it's a Scottish thing to have a wedding lunch before the wedding breakfast, but I'd promised Jimmy I'd be back on form tonight, and it made sense to have a big lunch to set myself up for the day...
Next episode: get ready for those kilts...
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