Despite my high expectations of this weekend I have bee brought back to earth the previous 6 weeks.
Saturday should have been my first Ultra this year, but a stabbing pain in the tendons and ligaments around the left ankle prevented me from running for about 4 weeks now. The injury started shortly after my first 30k run in 2019 in February not getting better until now.
Because we booked accommodations already, we went up to enjoy the weekend anyway.
Because the ankle felt a bit better, we decided to try and walk at least from Dunbar to East Linton, Smeaton Nursery, one of the nicest tea rooms we found so far in UK.
So after breakfast we had a short tour through the John Muir Museum (which is worth a stop!), we started walking towards East Linton/North Berwick along the John Muir Trail. This gave us the chance to actually experience some of what I would have encountered running the other direction.
We passed lots of the runners which gave me at least a bit of a feeling as being part of the whole thing, even though it made it also a bit more sad to not being able to run. After 14k I started to feel my ankle and we were happy to reach the cafe after 3 hours of walking through rain and grey misty weather. Despite the flatness of the trail it has really beautiful sections along the coast or Preston Mill.
We stayed the night in North Berwick and after the resting the ankle was fine again.
The Airbnb was one of the nicest we had in a while, lovely people and a beautiful house. The Sunday started with pure sunshine and a blue sky and after enjoying breakfast we walked along the beach, westwards towards Edinburgh. Because the John Muir way is diverted here from the coast and is more towards the inland, we walked the coastal path across long and white beaches with stunning views over Forth and the small islands in between.
Its a great walk of about 10k until you reach Gullane. From there we took the bus back to North Berwick and spent the rest of the day at the beach. We didn’t have such a sunny day in a long time!
Part if the weekend was the first trial of my Altra Timp Trails that I bought for the John Muir Way Ultra and the the upcoming UTS as a pair of well cushioned and comfortable shoes for the flatter and gravel/tarmac sections. Not having worn them before, the two 14+10k was were great to see how they work. They are really comfy, probably a bit smaller than expected but still big enough to leave room (I’ll see how they are running soon hopefully).