I'm now officially training for the West Highland Way Race!

This evening I got the email saying that I'm one of the 300 hundred lucky souls that will need to toe the line at Milngavie, Glasgow at 1am on Saturday 21st of June 2014, and then head 95 miles north along the West Highland Way to Fort William, covering 14760ft of ascent and finish in less than 35 hours.

I now have just over 6 months to prepare myself physically, mentally and logistically to cover the distance.  The furthest I have ever run in a day was the 53 miles of the Highland Fling that covers the southern half of the route.  It's only 42 miles further to each Fort William, that's not even twice as far so it'll be easy then :-)

I am under no delusions, running 95 miles along this particular trail will be the biggest physical challenge of my life by a long way.  I have enough basic aerobic fitness to put myself in the top third of the those entering the WHWR if we were to run a 10k, but you need far more than just aerobic fitness to travel 95 miles in one day.  

I've been pondering just what factors are key in enabling a running to transition well to running huge distances, it's not just aerobic fitness, there are other physical and mental factors that provide the resilience to make effective use of that aerobic fitness.  To train for all these, sometimes conflicting, factors is what I must now do, to put a label on all these factors together I'm drawn to the term "Aerobic Resilience."

I have various thoughts on how to train to build Aerobic Resilience through the next 7 months, but I'll leave these to follow up posts.  For now I'll just wrap by saying.

GULP!!! I have to run 95 miles!!!! Daunting and exciting in equal measures :-)