TTC - Hands up if you Enjoyed Yourself

Spot the deliberate mistake - fortunately
only one of thirty shirts was like this!

The 7th annual TTC was another very successful event for the Harriers. A full house of 28 runners from the Harriers and ATHelite, great weather (except Sunday), fantastic food and total enthusiasm from all involved made for a really enjoyable weekend. Friday evening's 5 mile trail run was used to fine tune the pack membership in the lead-up to a very busy Saturday. After an evening in the Lade Inn where our party of 30 made quite a dent in a tonne of food, we awoke for the traditional team photo (preceded by a little yoga) on Saturday morning. Resplendent in our event T-shirts we were soon photographed and good to go. 

A selection of routes taking in some or all of the Callander Woodwalk, Bracklinn Falls and the Crags (could almost be a list of some of the Callander pubs but in this case it was actually hills) tested the 3 packs over distances of 7 to 10 miles.

Top of the Callander Crags

Straight after that we launched into 3 seminars on Biomechanics and Causes of Injury (Robbie Rooney), Benefits of Massage (Grant McLullich) and Yoga for Runners (Mark Russell). A huge thankyou to the 3 speakers for sharing their expertise with us. An excellent buffet lunch was provided by Mhairi Taylor of Delizique/Mhor Bread to set us up for the afternoon. We started off with parallel sessions with Mark Russell taking the ever popular yoga session whilst I directed the Ministry of Funny Walks aka a running form session outside.

Harriers & Ladders - Running Form Drills

To round off Saturday's training we did a downhill hill reps session and then retired to the Lade Inn for dinner.A severe weather warning had been issued by the Met Office for Sunday with gale force winds and torrential rain forecast. They were almost right, it was very wet but the wind was fine. This year's routes covered distances of 12 to 16 miles taking in the three Lochs Venachar, Achray and Drunkie. No one was lost but everyone was soaked! After drying out, the training camp finished with another excellent Delizique lunch.

Thanks to all who helped organise and who participated in this memorable event. The hostel has been provisionally booked for the same weekend next year so hope to see you all there. Russell was chief photographer for the weekend so sometime soon I shall add Russell's photos to the album and link them to this post. The photo album containing some photos from Frances and me is here.  To be expanded.
Alan