29th – 30th of September – Visiting Nessie

Going through security my carry-on went through a new fancy machine that didn’t require you to remove anything from your bags – not even fluids. For the first time in a long time my bag got flagged, though; energy gel, basically fluids in small bags, understandably looked suspicious. The employee turned out to be an avid runner and with no one waiting after me we bonded over that for a few minutes before I was let go.

Getting to Inverness required a layover and I had mine in Amsterdam. My connecting flight ended up being an hour late which was annoying but on the other hand it resulted in a perfect connection with the train departing from the airport to Inverness. Though had I known how long a walk it was getting to the train station I would have been much less relaxed on the flight.

It was a short walk from the station to the hotel and I was soon checked in and settled in. It had gotten dark at that point but I ended up going for a short walk to get a feel for the area. It turns out that the hotel is just across the River Ness from the finishing area (the course passes the hotel with app. 1½ km left after which you cross a bridge over the river and end up running in the opposite direction to the finish line) and it was perfect with a pedestrian bridge connecting the two sides making a nice shortcut for when I’m returning to the hotel after the run. Unfortunately that bridge will be closed for most of the day during the run.

Inverness castle overlooking River Ness and Loch Ness.

The hotel I’m staying at is more of a hotel/apartment place; they own quite a few buildings along the street, so while they have normal hotel rooms they also rent out actual apartments – and at the end of the row of houses they had their restaurant. The main building where you’d find the reception they had several quite large function rooms, and being Scotland they also had their own distillery. 

Fanciest funeral home I've ever seen.

After getting breakfast at their restaurant I went to the runners’ expo and picked up my number before having a walk around town. After walking around for a bit and getting away from the center I must admit that I don’t think Inverness is the world’s most interesting town. To kill time I ended up entering their botanical garden, probably the smallest I’ve ever seen.

After a short break back at the hotel I went out for dinner at a restaurant that was connected to the local golf course. Not because it being my first choice as it was close to an hour’s walk away, but when you try booking less than a week in advance in the weekend of an activity where thousands of runners have signed up in a town of less than 50.000 people, places suddenly tend to get crowded. The walk there and back again were through areas I hadn’t been in previously so that was nice, and the weather was pleasant throughout th entire walk.

Visiting the botanical garden.

Meeting Nessie

It tends to be a bit dangerous being me when I'm bored and looking at future plans because I get very open to suggestions. I was looking for a short trip during the fall to spend some of my many saved up overtime hours from work so I could start using my vacation time. So when I saw a friend posting about her training for her first marathon I felt... inspired. I had a short chat with her and it didn't take long before I had booked my next extended weekend.

29th - 30th of September

Flying to Inverness, located at the northern end of Loch Ness, turned out to be more difficult than I had expected. I ended up getting tickets with a layover in Amsterdam, but not before I had checked tickets to Aberdeen (still needed a layover, and then a train ride after arriving) or London combining with a train ride north to my destination (flights were fine, but the train ride was long and more importantly expensive). I'll be arriving in the afternoon/evening in Inverness so I have a day and a bit to have a look around before the race. 

1st of October

The Loch Ness marathon is a point-to-point marathon, so in the morning we board busses that will take us south along the coast of the Loch, where we start app. 42km outside Inverness and then run in an almost straight line back to the city (town?) before doing a u-turn just before crossing the finish line. The run is considered as one of the most beautiful runs in the world, so I am looking forward to the views. The course is interesting; the first 16km is pretty much downhill from 350m to app. 50m, but around 28-30km we ascend app. 100m over 2-3km followed by downhill again to get us down to 10-20m. It'll be interesting in more sense than one - it'll be a long slog at the 28-30km mark and definitely give flashbacks to Heartbreak Hill in the Boston marathon.

2nd of October

Expecting to be sore I'll probably not get much sightseeing done before flying back out past noon.

I ended up only travelling Friday-Monday instead of the usual Thursday-Monday, mostly because it was hard to find a place to stay at that was close to the center, available and where the showers weren't shared. But here's crossing my fingers that day will be enough to unfold from the plane seat and be ready to run for 4 hours on the Sunday. I guess we'll have to wait and see.