TOO MUCH FOOD, WHAT BEARS DO, AND THE DEVILLA 15K

Twas the clubs annual dinner/prize giving on Friday night. The Rocks in Dunbar was the venue and much fun was had by all. Indeed much food was had by all (or at least by me - by my standards there was). I even lowered myself to the level of going round all the tables at the end of the night and stealing the uneaten chocolate mints from the tables and scoffing them. Not drinking has led me to develop a really unhealthy sweet tooth, and I just "lost the plot" a bit and was trying to eat my body weight in minty chocolate.

Yesterday, I went out for a nice easy 18 mile slow run. Nothing too strenuous or quick - I didn't want to put too much strain on the legs. Try to keep them fresh for the race today.
Anyway. There I was bimbling along quite happily, when the old stomach started to get all bubbly and churning away as it tried to cope with so much food from the night before.
I tried to ignore it.... It just got worse.
Eventually I had to face facts - I was going to have to have a "Paula moment". As luck would have it I was passing some woods and thought "well, if it's good enough for the bears......." So I stopped the watch and took a quick detour. I found a bit with a gap in the fence between the woods and the road and went in.
What I didn't see, was the old fence just under the leaves where the gap was. Yes indeed, for about the third time this year all ready I came tumbling down!! Only I sort of "pulled" the calf muscle on the leg that I caught.
Nothing too bad and once back on the road I was able to complete my training run. But it was still a bit tight yesterday afternoon, so loads of Tiger Balm has been rubbed on since then.

Then today it was off for the Devilla 15K trail race. Due to pretty horrendous snowy conditions on the Edinburgh bypass and getting caught up in tail backs from an accident we were starting to doubt if we would even get there. Strange thing was though, once off the bypass ...the roads were clear and there was hardly any sign of snow at all.
We got there OK, but once we got our numbers and chip we only had time for the briefest of warm up runs.

Started near the front and soon found myself in a small group that included Peter Buchanan and Johnny Lawson of Portobello as well as Ian Sills. Rab Watson of Musselburgh had set off like a rocket and was ahead of us from the word go.
After about two miles or so Mr Lawson pulled away from us, passed Rab, and the next I saw of him was at the end.

Peter B of Portobello manages to ruin my photo opportunity.

The three of us, and a wee county runner, stayed pretty much together for the whole race.
More "off road" sections to this race than I remembered from last year. A couple of bits were very boggy, twisty, and riddled with tree roots. Not my strongest sort of terrain, and I think the knowledge that if I was going to lose any time to these guys it would be here sort of gave me the impetus to try that bit harder. I was much happier on the forest road sections.

I was aware that I was starting to put a little bit between me and them in the last mile or so, but I was teriffied to even look round to check. I just kept the head down and ploughed on.
In the last quarter of a mile I was aware that they (or someone) was gaining on me. As we got back into the grounds of the Police College and onto the road I heard a shout from Ian along the lines of "keep going Stuart". I did look round and saw a red vest hammering towards me (Willie from Musselburgh).
Luckily managed to hold him off.
Came in in 58:18. Seventh overall and good enough to blag third vet so delighted with that.

Anne had a good race as well and was 5th in her category and, as part of all the prizes was beer, she's well set up with bevvy now.