Happily Ever After
Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running
Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.
Not the Kinloss 10k
by Russell Turner - 16:26 on 30 August 2025
Clearly, this weekend was cursed. Tomorrow, I should have been running the Dales Half Marathon from Fountains Abbey to Masham. It was cancelled. Then I chanced upon the Kinloss Running Festival, the same weekend, a mere 48 miles from home, and signed up for that. Then plans changed again and I downgraded to the 10k – with no refund for the difference in price.
That was in the past. Last week I ran a year’s best 10k on an undulating Killin course; today, on a pancake flat course inside Kinloss Army Barracks, I hoped to do even better. If only.
As a special treat, Matchgirl had chosen to accompany me to the event. The day was possibly a little warm but dry and windless; we were both organised for departure in good time with an ETA of 10.20: perfect for a registration cut-off of 11am and race start at 11.15. It was not to be.
Before we’d left I’d transferred credit card and some cash to my phone case so I didn’t have to take my wallet. What I’d forgotten to also transfer was my driving licence – the photo ID I needed to get inside active military premises. I realised just before Longman roundabout, leading to a swift drive back up the A9, but I knew it would be in vain. By the time we got home, Google Maps estimated my new arrival time at the barracks as 11.10, and that was without any traffic hold-ups. So Kinloss was off, and nobody’s fault but mine.
It could have been worse – I’d not travelled a huge distance and spent money on accommodation. But that was a very faint silver lining.
Instead of a flat and fast Kinloss I ran a slow and undulating Peffery Way between Dingwall and Strathpeffer: hard work, and a good excuse for slowing to chat with dog-walkers and path maintenance volunteers; 21ºC showed on the car dashboard when it was time to leave Fodderty car park. Maybe I’d have suffered equally at Kinloss. We’ll never know.
Next week features a 10-mile long run on Wednesday and the Podfather Stirling 10k on Sunday. Why Podfather? No idea. I’ve also no idea how hilly or otherwise the course is. I’ll cross my fingers and aim for sub-60min, as usual, rather than anything more ambitious. Maybe a new year’s best is still to come.
I found very few snaps of me among the squillions on the Killin 10k website. Here’s the least worst, captured on the old railway line about 1.5k into the race.
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