#UltraRunning – the drive or the driven? I’d always been the latter but think I’ll need to become the former 

  
It’s been a long time coming I suppose but I’d hoped to get to the end of my life without it but sadly it now seems necessary to preserve my rather full racing calendar. Yep, I’m going to have to learn to drive.Why? Well this weekend I’m missing Beachy Head and then the following weekend I’m missing the Hugin Challenge.

Beachy Head is unavoidable as it is in conflict with a wedding the GingaNinja is bridesmaid at and that’s fair enough but Hugin is a matter of logistics. I’m on solo parenting duty the weekend of Hugin (as unexpectedly the GingaNinja is working). Hugin was my replacement for Beachy Head so I was a little annoyed that her work was in the way of this race especially as I’ve been trying to run it for a little while now. However, I wasn’t to be deterred by something so small … No.

I started by confirming with the always awesome Rachel and Traviss if I could buggy run UltraBaby round the course – which they agreed to (they are mister and missus awesome). However, while this was good news there was less good news too, the problem was that it didn’t matter which way I cut it the South Eastern trains just won’t get me there early enough on race day and a hotel with UltraBaby isn’t a good idea as new places are always a challenge for her initially and neither of us would get any sleep the night before the event.

So disappointingly I won’t be able to run at Hugin.

The long term solution to ensure this doesn’t happen again is learning to drive. I’ve long put it off as I simply don’t enjoy driving, there’s no pleasure in it for me and in practical terms there’s never been a enormous need or pressure to learn. However, if I intend to keep racing then I need to be able to drive. This has an added benefit too – the GingaNinja can stop being quite so pissed off when I ask her to transport me to a race start or collect me from a race finish. Granted she’s always been awesome at the early starts, late finishes and checkpoint visiting but even I, with my blinkered view on running, can see it’s no fun for her and that has been unfair for a while now.

So come next year I’ll be learning to drive. It’ll be end of an era and I’ll probably shit myself more driving than I did on the Saltmarsh 75 and that is saying something! Wish me luck fellow runners.