Scotland: The West Highland Way

The West Highland Way is a trail that runs from the Milngavie, just north of Glasgow, to the town of Fort William, 95 miles north in the Scottish Highlands.  Our job as a crew for our runner was to make sure they had whatever they needed when they got to each check point throughout a 95 mile run.  Whether it be food, new shoes and socks or just more water, we were there to give them what they needed along the way.  The race itself would take anywhere between 24-30 hours to complete, that is with no breaks for sleep.  We arrived in Milngavie with about 8 or 9 hours of time before the race started, which was at 1 am.  We were all amped up so we did not sleep much the night before, so running on adrenaline we set out at midnight to drop our runners off and head to the first check point. We dropped off Josh and Angela, then headed out to the first checkpoint. Lets just remind everyone that over here, you drive on the left side of the road(this takes a lot of getting used to!) Our first check point we were headed to a town called Dryman, we hate this town.  I am sure it is nice and the people are great, but it is impossible to find in the dark with a map and signs that always apparently lead Stirling.  ALL ROADS LEAD TO STIRLING!  We were a mess.  After about two hours of endless driving and getting lost, we ended up making it to the first check point and met up with Angela.  She did not need much, but it was nice to know we were capable of actually getting to a check point.  The next check point was a bit more terrible because the group was introduced to a tiny insect called a midge.  These flying insects are much like mosquitos in the sense they fly, bite and leave little marks on your skin, but are worse because there are a ton more of them and they attack in large groups.  We only had two insect head gears, so only two people would go out at a time and the other three would stay back and try to sleep. Whitney and Amy couldn’t sleep, Shae and Kiki could kind of doze off but still not really, and Matt could have slept just about anywhere.  For most of our day it was sitting and waiting at check points for her to run by for five minutes and get what she needed, but the honor of helping someone complete a goal in their life was something we were all proud of and helped us carry on throughout the day.  One positive thing about being up so long was getting to drive through the Highlands.  Nothing can describe the awesome beauty of Northern Scotland.  The rolling hills, vast grass lands and mountains cut out by glaciers is almost unreal, the entire time you had to remind yourself that this was a real place and not something from a movie screen.  Every time we stopped we tried to sleep as much as possible, but we were in a mini van and sleeping comfortably was not really possible.  After being up from Midnight to about 3 am the next morning, we finally finished crewing and were just waiting for Angela to be done with the race, we missed it.  Her husband’s plan was to wake us up about 30-45 min before her projected finish time and meet her at the finish, but somehow she put on the turbo and finished an hour and a half before her ETA, moving up about 20 spots in the process.  We slept that night on the floor of their hotel room, not getting a room of our own because we did not know if we needed it or not.  We were so lucky they were nice enough to let us crash on their floor or else we would have been spending even more time in that damn van.  The day was a success and a great experience, but we were spent and completely depleted of anything, good thing we had the whole next day to just relax and sleep in the nice cozy highland town of Fort William. 

They had really crazy meats at one of the checkpoints... all we wanted was coffee.

This is what the checkpoints consisted of... food, water, restocking her backpack, changing socks, and telling her how far until the next checkpoint.

Our awesome crew, Team Skate Works

It was a very long two days, but I'm sure we would all do it over again in a second.  We had a lot of great laughs in that van over two days, and we enjoyed every second of it. We even got to see the Harry Potter Train!  If you ever are looking for an adventure, and something a little out of the ordinary, be sure to look up The Highlands!