Highland Trail 550, Day 2

Nice resort (I think), really caught my eye as I passed by on day 2

Day 2

I started my day with a short bit of bonus miles up the paved road I had woke up on, that smooth pave had me zoned out and not watching my GPS track.  Once I got back on route I climbed up to the wide open terrain around Loch ma Stac. 

There was some hike-a-bike across some marshy areas and along the shore line. 

Other than this I remember the rest of day 2 terrain as being roads, two track and quite a few short climbs, seems like only one required some pushing. Alan Goldsmith, the event organizer spent a few minutes riding and chatting with me as he passed by.  Alan was making up time after a too fast 1^st day followed by a long sleep in.  Thanks once again Alan for a great route, one of the best multi-day races around, one that should be on everyone’s bucket list.

After some fast food resupply from the Contin Filling Station I got rained/hailed on.  I was ‘expecting’ to get rain during the race so I simply suited up and kept going.  Had I been a bit more in tune with the local weather I might have realized it was just a passing storm and not anything long lasting.  But rather than shelter up I just but my head down and paced on. 

The entire day was one long slow easy pace.  I did some extra miles by initially missing the café at the Oykel Bridge Hotel, needed to turn left after the bridge. 

I wasted some time getting a real meal at Oykel but enjoyed listing to all the other racers milling about.  The café is very in tune with the race and had set up the bar area to dine in for all of us stinky dirty racers.  Worked out good, when I left I could see the normal clientele watching us come and go out the main dining room windows.  I wonder what they thought of all the crazy bikepackers, hopefully one or two saw we were all having a good time…..

I finished up the second day after dark at tip of Loch Shin.  I was 220 miles into it and had made up some of my hoped for miles but not enough.  I was still about 15-20 miles shy of where had I hoped to be.  Also at 220 miles in I was basically done with the easy miles.  Up till now it had been relatively easy and fast, at least in comparison to what was coming.  Day 3 would be quite a bit more strenuous.  If I were to ever run this race again I would push much much harder on days 1 and 2.  I think for a ‘average’ racer like myself days 1 and 2 are where one should burn some matches and gain as many miles as possible.