Tartan 10k Braemar

I suspect the 27th of April 2013 will go down as the last time I ever attempt a 10k run. The race was through the grounds of Balmoral castle near Braemar, so maybe the appeal of running through the Queen,s garden was just too much to resist.

I lasted about 1 kilometre before I felt a jarring pain through my right knee. I then walked a few 100 metres till it eased, ran for a bit more until it was sore and then walked again. I carried on this feeble mix until I got to the base of the hill climb.

When I started running up the hill the different movement was alot easier so I ran up past the 100,s of people walking up the steep hill. When I got to the top I was at 5k and now exactly 5k from the start/finish, so no point stopping now. As it levelled out this was really uncomfortable again so I carried on limping about like a buckled wheel for the last 5k and had to keep stopping and let all the people past I had smoked on the way up the hill. I eventually came stumbling in to the finish straight as if I had been badly wounded in combat. All the time being overtaken by old ladies, walkers, and seriously overweight charity "runners" who looked like they were going to have a heart attack. It was an eye opening advert for the fitness of the general Scottish public!
There were about 1850 people in total, the winner finished in 31 minutes, I was just behind with a time of one hour and 13 minutes..in 1677 th position.