As a challenge, I’m going to run, bike or swim every day in January.

Day Thirty

Well, that was stupid.

Before we started running I gave my car key to Iain TwinBikeRun to keep in his car. “We don’t need both keys,” I thought, “I can just pick it up at the end from his car.”

Except, halfway round, I checked the time and thought I wouldn’t have time to run up Holehead. Instead, I could take a shortcut to the finish and get home earlier. Genuis, I thought. Until I got to the car without my key. And it started to snow.

With hypothermia a real risk, as I was near zero, I’d been running or 90 minutes and my t-shirt and jacket were damp with sweat, I had no choice but to… run up Holehead and try and stay warm by staying active. I also thought I might encounter Iain coming back down but, when I was three quarters of the way up I had the horrible thought that maybe this wasn’t the right path and I should stick closer to his car instead.

I turned back and was running laps of a few hundred metres beside his car until I could see he was coming down. I jogged to meet him and then back to the car to switch the heating on in full and drive home while being blasted by near Saharan levels of hot air.

How was it? All good, apart from the hypothermia worry. I’m not sure I would have enjoyed the route if it had been in the middle of the challenge but knowing this was the second last day and that tomorrow will involve a swim, it felt okay to push things with two climbs.