I never thought I would hear myself saying this: Patagonia trumps Antarctica!
What an epic, spectacular, awesome and inspiring experience the South American stage of the Global Odyssey 100 was.
Nature finally let me pass, allowed safe passage and I completed the African stage of my Global Odyssey 100k challenge. It was my day. I rocked it.
2018 has been the epitomised the odyssey. It has been a year of challenges both physical and mental; and there have been successes and failures. It would not be an odyssey if it was easy, and it would not be an odyssey if I didn’t learn along the way.
A friend recently declared in public that she ‘loved running; but was not very good at it’. This made me think. Define a good runner. What makes a good runner? Is it really just the domain of the elites, the club runners, the front of the pack runners, the podium placing runners?
Recently watching a documentary about an Everest ascent that did not go to plan I was struck by the cost of hubris. The climber’s desire and determination to be the first to summit in that season, and significantly, to be last off the summit that day despite rapidly deteriorating weather conditions was an act of sheer hubris and lack of respect for nature that almost cost him his life.
I knew there was a reason why I don’t normally line up events for January and February and why my mileage goes down over the winter. It’s the I just want to rest on my summer laurels, kick back, reduce the mileage and lie about in the warmth and get fat factor. This bear just wants to coorie in and hibernate.
I must be honest and say that this blog entry is tinged with disappointment and frustration at my second failure to complete the African stage of the Global Odyssey, but I am entirely comfortable with my decision to abandon forty-five kilometres into the 100k Ultra Mirage el Djerid event.
An epic run with a Mongolian mud spa treatment thrown in for free.
Where do I start? This stage of the Global Odyssey 100 was the perfect example of what the Global Odyssey is about: remote, extreme, challenging, wild, beautiful and awe inspiring. One hundred kilometres over foothills, through gorges, over desert plains in rain and sunshine with temperatures ranging from fifteen to thirty-one degrees, from dawn to night.
Roadtrip! After knocking a few ideas and plans back and forth we decided that the Global Odyssey 100 Gobi expedition should start with an eight-hundred-kilometre, two day road trip from Ulaanbaatar to the capital of the Gobi Dalanzhadgad, with an overnight stop at Mandalgovi – middle Gobi. Time to sit back, relax and get into the zone. What can I say: it was epic.
Plan: let’s stop over in Frankfurt en-route to Ulaanbaatar for the Global Odyssey Gobi 100k. We don’t have to worry about tight connections; we can rest up before the long haul flight and we can explore a new city.
I would never have imagined that the Scottish Highlands would have been the location for heat conditioning for the Gobi Desert or that the Great Glen Ultra would be my last long run for my Global Odyssey Gobi 100k challenge. Surreal as it seems that is how things roll sometimes.
When someone mentions an A-Z of Glasgow I am immediately transported back to when I first came to the city well over thirty years ago and armed myself with the trusty A-Z of Glasgow map book. That’s what you did back in the days before internet, mobile phones and google maps.
The Namibian Odyssey 100k was certainly an adventure and a journey of discovery; just not the one I had expected. How wrong did it go? Spectacularly wrong. They say, that if you are going to fail; fail with style, get eaten by a leopard or something of that ilk. Failing because you are bit pooped simply lacks panache. I can give Cyrano de Bergerac a run for his money when it comes to panache.
‘If you're seeing things running through your head Who you gonna call?’ Sandbaggers!
There I was dreaming about those remote, extreme, beautiful, exquisitely painful 100ks that you have set yourself the challenge of doing for the Global Odyssey 100. Antarctica, no problem: done. Europe, no problem: done. Africa; wait a minute, there are not that many one-day 100k events on the African continent and the ones I found just did not seem to whet my appetite. There was something missing, a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’. Do I settle?
Car crash alert! You would have thought it would get easier with each year that passes, but no, the path to getting the Loch Katrine Running Festival over the start line this year has been littered with caltrops waiting to trip me up.
High Terrain Events and I have ‘previous’, in fact the Glentress Trail Marathon and I have previous. I came last in the previous two High Terrain Events that I did in 2017: Kielder 80km and the Tweed Valley 65k. When I ran in the first edition of the Glentress Trail Marathon I was a DNF at the halfway point, just not having the motivation to tackle the mud again.
To quote Jack Nicolson ‘What if this is as good as it gets?’
I have accepted the noticeable deterioration in the elasticity of my skin and the little wrinkles and lines forming, the drift south.
