Such an amazing experience running my first ever trail race.

It was a relatively forgiving start time of 10:30am with the start line at Glencoe ski centre. It’s around 1.5 hours away so I set off at 7:30am to leave plenty of time for touristy highland traffic (which can be crazy this time of year!)

The first thing that hit me (almost literally) was the unbelievable amount of midges. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life and a week on I am still paying the price with some brutal bites on my legs.

The distances of the event ranged from ultra through to a nice and manageable 10k. I didn’t want to go too full on for my first trail as with the incline and terrain I knew it would be way harder than the road racing I’ve done in the past so I played it safe and went 10k.

The run was awesome and harder and easier than I expected. The uphills were nowhere near as brutal as I expected but the downhills were way harder. I’ve never run down such sheer drops and you could definitely tell that the course was set over a snowless ski slope.

There was a real a sense of community and more opportunity to chat than on road races. I’m not normally a great talker on runs as I find that a) I need to concentrate and b) I don’t want to annoy other people! But on this trail run there were inevitably bits of incline that could only be tackled by walking and it was really nice to find fellow power walkers to keep you going and help you out when your shoes got sucked into bog.

There were also a few Cani Cross runners which was amazing because who doesn’t love running with a dog!?

The finish line feeling was fabulous as the last 800 metres were bunny run and so had a gentle but speedy gradient. There were so many lovely volunteers who really made a sense of occasion of the finish.

The whole thing was brilliant organised by The Trail Events Co and they provided all kinds of snacks and drinks for our cool down. I really recommend trying one of their events, I definitely will look to run another one soon.

I came away with an amazing feeling of having spent a morning in outrageously beautiful countryside with lovely company and a medal to boot. Oh and a few hundred midge bites.

Trail Events Co #trailrunning #scotland