Early Monday

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The Half Marathon was a stunning success....sort of. Mike, my nephew raced in at 1 hour 39 minutes, cheered on over the line by me and Laura. Susan had a personal best and made it in under the 2 hours. That was the successful part of the day.

However....

My saga was really quite different. Oh, it started out well, bag full of flasks, food and dry clothing and I even got to the location easily (well for me anyway) and only got lost twice.

Back to the aforementioned cheering of Susan over the line. I think she was too busy smiling for the cameras and never seen me. This then lead to her thinking I wasn't there. This glitch was compounded to by the fact my phone decided to die. I missed her at the exit gate, and stood in the pouring rain for over an hour until even the runners dressed as bananas had came and gone and I decided to give up when the last runners came through who had carried their kids around the course. I then had to hump my holdall, which was like a hang-glider storage bag all the way back to the car. The rain by now is lashing down. I know I should have taken the by-pass home...but no, I decided to be a sheep and followed the rest of the traffic. By the time I got stuck on Princess Street in Edinburgh, I was getting frustrated. I used to know how to get home from there, but all traffic is diverted due to laying new tram lines. I then ended up miles away from the intended route, but ended up at the zoo. Not too bad now as I had been lost there before, so eventually made it to the Forth road bridge. I'm never going to leave home again. Even worse, I had lent my sat-nav to Mike....and they never bothered using it.. GRRR.

Anyway, congratulations to all the runners and...you're on your own next year...