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Henke wrote:My feet are covered in blisters, but that's the least of my physical woes to tell you the truth.

Yeah, my teammate and I really had no idea how hard it would be. He told me it would be mostly roads. Was it strawberry float! A good ten miles of was horrific swamp and the rest was hills (not counting the mental climb up the Spittal of Glenshee). I had to dump my partner about 10 miles in as he was slowing too much and I wanted to make it to the checkpoints in enough time to have a crack at the gold level. I did the second half of the bronze leg on my own and stopped for a massage. I had done 22 miles of nasty terrain by that point but for some reason I didn't feel like eating any of the food they had prepared. A large portion of people seemed to be stopping at that point but I wanted to push on alone. I was stopped as I left the checkpoint though as apparently I needed to be with at least 2 other people to continue. Along came a group of 6 people from the Alliance Trust (sponsors of the event) who wanted to have a crack at gold and they adopted me and we set off. They kept a good constant pace which was ideal. I got to the know the folk and really started to enjoy the yomp at that point. The silver leg wasn't too bad for the first third but it got pretty tough after that. Morale within certain members of the group started to drop but I was still feeling good for the long haul. Then about 5 miles from the silver checkpoint I started to feel ill, like physically sick. I struggled onto the silver checkpoint (about 40 miles in total completed) and sat down for a bit. Suddenly the nausea went through the roof and I started shaking uncontrollably. One of the medics spotted me and came over to assess me. He asked me when I last had something to drink and I told him I didn't know. He asked when I last peed and I realised that was 10 hours prior. Suddenly I had this moment of startling realisation that I had forgotten to drink, like at all. I was so focused on getting to each milestone that I didn't really think to stop, open my massive rucksack (speaking of which, it seemed like I was carrying 4 times more than everyone else - how the strawberry float did that happen? ) and have a drink from time to time. The medic kept me at the station for like 4 hours while I slowly transitioned from a quivering mess into something more like a hiker. Unfortunately, despite getting to that checkpoint 3 hours ahead of schedule I was never going to make it beyond it before they stopped people from leaving. It would have been a terrible idea anyway. I got a lift back to Blairgowrie from some dude in a Land Rover and my event was over.

Oh yeah, I kept expecting to see my mate show up at the silver point since he texted to say he had left bronze way back when I had a phone signal. It turns out he got a mile past it before giving up though and he had someone come pick him up early. I never saw him again. So much for the team.