I ran this marathon for Charlotte who also happened to be celebrating her 7th birthday that day:
After enjoying the virtual West Highland Way, I decided to enter another long distance ultra: the 100km/62.5mile Race to the Stones. This time I planned to finish with a marathon rather than start with one.
The week the virtual race started I should have been in France, I wasn’t. I also wasn’t the only person to have a holiday cancelled but I was quite grumpy about it, so with restrictions lifted a bit, we decided to book a cottage in the borders: at least it was a different set of four walls even if I was still hanging out with the same three other people (husband and 2 kids). I probably wouldn’t have done any running during this holiday, but I had to get to 36 miles before the marathon so I explored various parts of Dalbeattie and surrounding areas, generally looking for stones to match the theme of the race!
For marathon #8, Vikki planned us a Stoney route around Bennachie finishing at a stone circle. We set off and within a mile found ourselves being challenged by a farmer who wouldn’t let us use the road running through his farm, grumpy old man! We tried various options to get past but had to admit defeat so we went to the stone circle where we were due to finish, and then got back in the car and drove round to the Bennachie centre to start again from there.
The route was tough, taking in Mither Tap, Oxen Craig, Black Hill and Millstone Hill but it was a glorious day out with great company.
We got back to the car and hadn’t quite run enough so had to do an out and back, my watch was behind everyone else’s so I had to go further to make sure I had recorded a marathon, here I am running back to meet everyone, very pleased to be finishing number 8:
There was a photo competition running for people doing the Race to the Stones, so we spent a lot of time trying to get arty shots but we didn’t win!
Robertson Family Fundraising 