Gala Day Tapering

It's the back of eight on a Saturday night. I'm home alone, no kids and I'm sitting at my laptop blogging. How sad.
Well that's how things go when yer bloke is out working playing at being James Bond and is too far away to come home for his dinner.

This time next week I hope to be nearly half way through my Caledonian Challenge. For 24 hours I'm going to be (to quote Keith Hughes) a p***k with a stick. Well do you know what......I'll be glad of my sticks, I think they will be mental and physical crutch for me what with all the grief I've had with my back.

I have been introduced to a new concept in the last few days; tapering. Now I have never been involved with anything remotely long enough that requires taper. To me its something to light your candles with.
Training has not gone anywhere near to plan, and I feel like I'm cramming for my exams. I spent weeks last year telling my 2nd year development students that there was no point staying up to 4am trying to squash in that last bit of theory, and here I am almost doing the exact same thing. That was of course before the voice of reason chucked his two peneth in. I know, I know it's hard to believe but the Subversive Pirate does know a thing or two about training. So, my Maw and Me binned the idea of 25 miles on the trails around Cairn Table and opted for a leisurely 14 in and around the villages and towns adjacent to Strathaven. What we didn't account for was the fact that Gala Day season is now upon us and as we reached the 30 mph sign in Stonehouse the pipe band struck up to mark our arrival at the half way point. We walked headlong into the oncoming parade of floats and fancy dressed school kids.
It was a crackin day though. Much cooler than last week but damn windy.

So that's it, training is all done. No point worrying about it now. Still got a wee bit of fund raising to do, but we have until the end of July so should be ok. On that note I received a donation today in the post from someone who I'll not name here, as I wouldn't want to embarrass him, but I would like to thank him for his generosity. It's greatly appreciated, you know who you are.

So to all you serious mentalists taper like it's going out of fashion. I'll see you all in two weeks where you'll be champing at the bit and I'll be trying to walk without looking like I've done something in my trousers ;-)

Mrs Mac x