6th November, 2024
Intro
This is my first blog for a long time; to be honest I've been putting my effort into videography, so far I have released 52 long-form videos and 36 shorts. And they are all about one thing: I'm going to celebrate my 50th Birthday on the 26th of March 2026 by running 50 miles.
It was a couple of days after my 48th birthday, at the end of March, 2024. I was out for my long run, it was a sunny morning and I was happy to be out. I thought to myself, "what am I going to do to mark my 50th birthday?"; given how important running has become to me, I quickly came to the conclusion that I should run 50 miles. You know, as you do?
If you are an ultra runner you might not be particularly impressed by this, but I only started running just after my 46th birthday and back then I only had ambitions to run 5km a couple of times a week. The idea of running a half marathon never even entered my mind, and running 80km was just crazy talk.
The Route
Most of my running is just around the local area, I can run a 30km circuit from my front door that is only about 30% paved which suits me just fine for training. But for The Big Run I wanted it to be somewhere a bit different, probably a point-to-point route. There are many great long distance trails in Scotland, however it was the West Highland Way that came to mind first. I have never been interested in walking it, but running was a different matter!
Finishing at Fort William seemed like the obvious choice, so it was just a case of extending the route back in Strava until it was at the 80km mark. It turns out that Crianlarich is exactly the right distance away!
Progress So Far
Let's just say that the past 7 months have not gone fully to plan. But that is for the next blog. I am also going to write a blog on what my overall training plan is, I can then come back to that and compare it to reality.