“Headshot!” shouted the Stormtrooper from Star Wars before squirting a water pistol in the face of a runner racing towards him.

“Hee hee hee hee!”

I only saw a handful of runners in fancy dress at this year’s Great Scottish Run. This was a surprise as it was also the largest ever event with nearly 30,000 runners. I thought in proportion the number of runners in fancy dress would also increase but, other than the stormtrooper committing unwanted liquid assaults across the course (though to be fair, it’s not like Stormtroopers are ‘good guys’!), the only other person in fancy dress was Batman. Which is to say that a runner was dressed as Batman, not that Batman was in fancy dress as a rhino or a deep water diver.

Not the the Stormtrooper was the strangest sight on the course. Around mile five I saw a man jogging while juggling three balls. I assume he must have been juggling them from the start. It would have been strange for him to get to mile five and then think “Wait! I’ve got three balls in my pocket, I could juggle them!”.

I assume there’s a real skill in juggling while jogging. For a start you need to throw the balls forward to run and catch them while moving forward. There’s no point throwing them straight up when you would just run under and passed them.

But why juggle? At what point in their juggling career did they think: “this is no longer a challenge, I should jog too!”. Or, in what point of their running career, did they think: “Running half marathon is easy, I need a challenge: I could juggle!”.

And did they build up to this? Did they juggle a 5k, a 10k and finally the Great Scottish Run? Are they building up to a marathon or an ultra? Or are they going to add more balls until eventually they’re juggling 10 balls and spinning a plate on their head?

And then, after writing that paragraph, I goggled jogging and juggling and discovered that, yes, it was a case of adding a challenge to a run: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-68451536

And it’s an actual sport. Well, I say sport. According to this report there are 600 jogglers competing around the world. More people take part in Chess Boxing, which is less a sport and more a sport based on a random word generator.

I didn’t juggle but I did have a self imposed restriction too: I ran with Iain TwinBikerun!

Iain was recovering from COVID so I ran with him for the first nine miles until he started to get too slow, and then, good brother that I am, I left him and ran to the finish line.

The route felt a bit more open this year, and I think that may be as a result of the large number of runners taking part. The race was split into several waves, and some of the large crowds from last year were better dispersed around the course. However, due to the number of people taking part, the start was severely delayed as it took nearly 25 mins to reach the start line.

The end was equally busy and we had to queue for a finish photo with the finisher’s bell. As we queued the man in front of us, an American, asked if we could take his photo as he didn’t have a camera and could we then email him the results later. We did but it was only in the evening that I realised we’d missed a golden opportunity: we should have photoshopped his photos!

Overall, the Great Scottish Run is extremely well organised, with plenty of water stations, good support throughout the course and exactly the same complaint I had as last year as they used the same course: it’s still one of the least scenic routes you can design through Glasgow. But it is almost flat and therefore perfect for jogging. And juggling.

There is a chapter in the novel ‘Trainspotting’ titled “The Worst Toilet in Scotland”. I’ve read Transporting, I’ve seen the film, and all I can say is that author Irvine Welsh must have missed out the Lidl in Musselburgh.

Scurry to the Sea is a point to point race starting in the Pentland Hills and finishing with a run along Musselburgh beach. There is an 8am bus to take you from the finish line to the start, to make it easier to park at the end and run from the start. But, as Iain TwinBikeRun and I were both driving, we met at the beach, parked one car there and drove the other to the start. On the way, we thought: “We can avoid the normal queue for the toilets before the race by stopping on the way – and, look, there’s a Lidl, it’s bound to have a toilet.”

The first red flag should have been raised when we couldn’t get to the toilet without going into the store and asking to squeeze past people queuing at the till. One way doors didn’t allow access to the toilets behind the till until you’d queued.

The second red flag was that this is a Lidl and Lidl operates on a one employee, one massive queue, one toilet model. If it costs money, Lidl doesn’t pay it.

The third red flag was Iain going into the toilet first and coming out and saying “Don’t go in there.”

Like a driver for Ferrari driving round the track, I thought the red flags were urging me forward and I went in.

I came straight out.

This is a family blog and Trainspotting is a graphic and adult novel of drugs, abuse and squalor so all I can say is: Chose life. Choose crossing your legs. Choose any other toilet in East Lothian.

The race itself was well organised and there was plenty of time at the start to get ready. The first mile and a half is a straight climb/slog up to the summit of Swanston in the Pentlands, before the rest of race, around 10 and half miles descends down through Edinburgh, around Braids Hill, out through Brunstane, finishing in Musselburgh.

Most of the race is off road or through parks or cycle paths so it never feels like you’re running through a city. However, with quite a few streets and turns on the way, it was helpful that Iain TwinBikeRun knew the route, as, even with other runners around, and markers to point in the right direction, I think I would have got lost.

Overall, an unusual challenge, a 10 mile downhill section, and a good run to start waking the legs up after Celtman.