St Magnus Marathon

 

We road tripped it up Friday morning in Mark’s Mazda Bongo camper van, stopping off in a campsite in Aviemore. We checked out their local parkrun the following morning…there was some confusion trying to find the start as we didn’t realise the Scottish start their parkruns at 09:30! We continued our journey up north including a “choppy” 1hr30 ferry into the Orkney islands.

 

The Marathon starts in Kirkwall, follows the island round and finishes in the north-west corner in Birsay. The course is undulating and there was a very strong headwind for what felt like most of the race. For such a small event it was very well organised and very pleasing seeing the locals cheering us on from their front gardens. When I soon realised a top 3 finish was out of the question I kicked back a little, so I could at least take in some of the views. I ran most of the race with Grace (first F) pacing each other and taking it in turns being in front with the headwind.