All ready for West Highland Way Race 2015

My big race of the year, the 95 mile West Highland Way Race, is starting in 5 hours time (at time of writing) at 1am on Saturday 20th June.  Nerves have set in, stomachs being doing cartwheels for the last two days, only got 5hrs sleep in the last two days... but nothing will stop me chasing my dream race.  So here's my goals:

• 18:30:00 Platinum – 25 % chance, absolute perfect day of racing
• 19:00:00 Gold – 50% chance, good day racing
• 19:30:00 Sliver – 75% chance
• 20:18:00 Bronze – Struggle a bit but still finish with a PB

Given my how my training and racing has gone this year I'm pretty confident that I'm in the shape to go sub 20hrs, and should be able to do around 19hrs as long as I have a goo day, so 19hrs will be my focus.  If the day goes really well I won't hold back from chasing my Platinum.   If things go pear shaped then just a finish will be grand - it's 95 miles of tough trails, so one has to respect it what it can throw at you.


My race number is 184, and you can follow my via twitter, facebook or via the sportident website. The direct link to my entry is:

Sportident Checkpoint timing website

On twitter the #whwrace  is popular for postings about the race, often there will be updates from crews as the race unfolds.

The splits I'll be using are derived from my 2014 splits, but adjusting to remove the stops for dealing with blisters and having to walk part of the final 14 miles due to a calf injury.  These cleaned up splits therefore represent a prefect race, if when you follow the race I stay within a single column you'll know that I'm running well.  I'm hoping it'll be around the 19:00 column, but will be pacing by HR again (aiming for a HR range of 135 to 140 which is around 79 to 82% of my lactate threashold HR), so will just end up in the column that my heart tell me looks to be right for how it's working on the day.

For comparison my splits for last year were - I've left a blank column so you can write on your monitor as I progress :-)

There is plenty of opportunities for little or large problems to crop up during the race, just like last year, so it might be that thanks to an incident or problem I might end up walking or slowing significantly, this will show up in shifting columns.  Don't worry though, I had falls, blisters and calf injury last year and still finished in a very respectable time, so just be patient the website should eventually pop me up even if it's a bit later than expected given earlier progress.

One small spanner in the works is that I picked up a bit of cold on Wednesday so my HR may well be a bit elevated, so my pace might be a tad off where I was originally hoping.  Still I feeling well enough to race and won't give up on my dream of a sub 20hrs quite yet.

Not long to go now, whooooohooo :-)