Johnny Hall's Travels and Travails

After I didn't get into the Fred Whitton Challenge, I had to have a bit of a rethink about what I want to achieve this year, athletically. I had originally been thinking about doing some fell running in the Lakes after the Old County Tops but on reflection, I've decided to concentrate almost solely on racing in Scotland this year. After all, it's the best country in the world, so why go anywhere else? I'm not built for, or enthused by, short, fast races, so I'll try to build upon my endurance gains of the last couple of years by running long distance hill races in the main. The Scottish Hill Running Association have a long classics series of races, 11 in all. So, rather than exclusively focus on one race and build a season around that, as I have done the last couple of years, I'm going to attempt to race throughout the season. Although there are 11 races, to be counted as having completed the series, you must race at least 5. I've identified 6 that I'd like to do and I'll aim for that. Of course, that's a lot of racing, so we'll have to see how I get on.

• Stuc a' Chroin is just over a half marathon distance on a hill I've climbed before. It's the day before the Edinburgh 10k at the beginning of May, which isn't ideal but it should make a nice start.
• Isle of Jura is later in May and looks to be probably the hardest race of the series. It's a part of Scotland I've never been to before so I'm keen to get to this one.
• Glen Rosa is another island race towards the end of June and again, I've never been to Arran.
• Glenshee is the longest race of the series around the 9 munros either side of the ski area. They are all on my to-do list, so what better way to climb them (particularly as I'm not particularly inspired to walk them).
• Two Breweries is right on my doorstep. The start is 3 miles from my house and runs across hills that I'm familiar with, although I'm yet to climb most of them. By all accounts, this is a hard race and a long distance.
• Pentland Skyline is the other big Pentland race (Carnethy 5 is next month, I'm entered in this as well) and is close to home.

So, a lot of running and racing over the next few months. I won't be aiming to run any of these too hard, I'd just like to learn to become a long distance fell runner this year, in the same way I learned about open water triathlon in 2007. On the face of it, picking lots of long distance races to do in a first season would seem excessive but it worked for my with triathlon, when my first races were 6 hours, 5 hours, 3 hours and 9 hours in duration. Now I need to get some new, comfortable, fell shoes.