You’ll Take the High Road and I’ll Take the Low Road…. 25:28

Saturday, June 13, 2009

I think we were just a wee bit tired! Juice and I slept until 11:30 this morning….that was a twelve-hour sleep and it was a deep one! I was pretty happy about that. I felt rested and knew that even if I had a typical tossy-turney night before tomorrow’s race, I would be ok. The room, and the bed more importantly, was comfortable so I slept like a baby!

We checked out of our room, left our luggage at the hotel and had breakfast just a few minutes away and then spent another hour or so shopping around before we went back, picked up our luggage and headed for the train station. The trip to Balloch was only 40′. It was another glorious day so we got to see a bit of the country-side. Balloch is a quaint village on the famous Loch Lomond. Finding the inn was pretty easy as it was just a five minute walk from the train station. We crossed a bridge and noticed there were B&Bs everywhere.

I noticed that when I went on-line a few weeks ago to look for a place, there were dozens of places to choose from. It turns out I made a good choice because were were close to both the train station and the race start. We stayed at the Waterhouse Inn. There was a small pub below with just a few rooms above and we lucked out again because the room was great!

Our race packages were waiting for us when we got there and we got an idea from rough directions inside, where the race started but had no idea where the actual race route went. The description of the course indicated that there was a good 2kms of uphill running somewhere near the start. We were without internet so I couldn’t check in with Jon. I guessed with the jet-lag and the tough start to the race, he would advise me to take the first few kms fairly steady and then try and run quicker as the race went on, so that was the plan.

Juice and I did an easy 25′ along some great trails we found near the start . We just love where we are staying. The town is so cute ans quiet! We then had dinner at an inn across from where we were staying. We saw a number of other athletes there. When we got back to the room we looked at the race brochure more closely and found out that this race, which is one is a series, was the Scottish 10km Road Race Championships…I thought this was a fun run…yikes!

Total Time: Very flat 25:52 (4.34 km)

Avg/Km: 5:52

Avg HR: 104 bpm