Wan Dae in the Pentlands

Ah, what a sodding great Saturday that was. My first solo multi-sport event (yes, hard to believe I’ve been dancing around the edges of this sport for so long without entering many events) and I’d stepped up from the five hour to the eight hour due to be being called a wimp. sigh.

So I decided to do the run first and set off into the Pentlands wearing my unused Mud Claws (they’re great). The first activity I reached was a crawl through a pipe which was so bad as it was clean. From there we set off straight up the side of the hill to checkpoints two and three. From there, the rot set in. I set off to try and grab a couple of the outliers but made an amazing navigational cock-up and missed both of them netting myself a massive 51 minute split between points so early on in the day.

After that I headed back to the bike in the hope of making it to the kayak stage in time. I didn’t. Again, shite route choice saw my pushing my bike up a muddy hill. Then it was three checkpoints in a row and I started to feel better. I definitely felt better when I rolled up to a checkpoint to be greeted by a marshal who recognised me and declared that was followed would be revenge for all the pain I’d inflicted as a marshal. It made me smile and luckily it was an easy checkpoint.

After that, I just kept pedalling and went for a couple of outliers on the bike with much more success than the running. After finding my last checkpoint, I was painfully getting myself up the hill when Gary rolled over the summit and started snapping pictures. I’m sure they’ll look great! Actually, I can’t wait to see them.

From there it was an easy ride home, part of which involved a sketchy descent that I’d wimped out on last year with Sandy and Tim. This time I flew down it without thinking too much about it. Result!

Last time I made that descent though, I managed to severly bruise my tailbone riding over the bumpy grass at the foot of it which saw me being pretty much unable to walk properly for a few days. This time I saw the dip coming, but only at the last minute. This time by front wheel stopped dead and the bike and I went for a somersault. Pain. Yay for helmets. Just a few hundred metres to home though so it was easy to pick myself up and carry on to the bottom.

Next time I’ll make better nav decisions as well as choosing what order to do the sections in. However, fucking awesome day out.