“You should do the Highland Cross.”

Sunday, March 12, 2006 and I’m in a bar in Inverness, full of the joys at having completed my first ever half marathon and pretty full of beer too, truth be told.

I’m with my friend John, a fellow journalist from the Evening Times, and some other friends as we get talking with other runners and I hear mention of the Highland Cross for the first time in my life.

Saturday, June 21, 2025 and I am finally about to experience it, in all its glorious technicolour.

From that moment I first heard about it, this event captured my imagination. How could it not? A 50 mile duathlon across Scotland, from coast to coast, through one of the most beautiful parts of the Highlands? It sounded romantic and gruelling in equal measure, going from Kintail through Glen Affric and Strathglass to Beauly, 20 miles on foot and then 30 on the bike.

It took 19 years to get here. What happened in between is a common tale of settling down and having a family, yes, but also complicated by years of problems with my feet. Multiple surgeries, beginning with a bunion correction that went wrong and subsequent procedures to try to fix it.

When I finally stood on that start line at Morvich, just north of Kintail, I could not quite believe I was there and now, days later, I still can’t quite believe it happened.

I would say I’m a ‘normal’ person. I don’t have any athletic talent at all worth mentioning and I had really mixed feelings beforehand.

I had been plagued with foot pain recently and was worrying about what I was in for. Was it going to be 20 miles of pure suffering? I was scared of it but, as the saying goes, ‘do it scared’. I figured that if pain was going to be part of my experience, then I had better find a way to accept it.

The Highland Cross exists to raise money for good causes in the Highlands. It first took place in 1983 and has raised more than £6.3million to charities since then. It is held in midsummer and is famously hard to get into. You can only enter as part of a team of three, not solo, and have to be ‘invited’ to take part, usually going through a ballot to get a team place.

There are a lot of logistics involved in doing the Highland Cross – that’s a story for another time –but the first challenge anyone has when thinking about entering is that of getting a team together.

I ‘found’ my team at the Hebrides Triathlon in Lewis, where I’m from, last summer. I was chatting at the buffet afterwards with two women, Anna and Sarah, when the Highland Cross came up.

“I’d love to do it,” I said.

“So would I,” said Anna.

“Me too,” said Sarah, “but you need a team.”

We all looked at each other. One WhatsApp group later and we had ourselves a team.

Getting a place in the Highland Cross is not easy. As I said, entry is ‘invitation only’.

There is capacity for 265 teams of three, making 795 altogether, and teams must pledge to raise a minimum of £500 sponsorship for the Highland Cross charities nominated that year.

The first step to getting in was to email the organisers, expressing an interest. Priority registration goes to participants who have taken part the previous year and the list opens to the public after that.

The official process begins in January when the SiEntries system sends out ‘invitations to apply’. As happened this year, the email from SiEntries will tell you if there is going to be a ballot due to the number of teams looking for a place. It will say it’s an ‘invitation to join the entry ballot’.

At this point you still have to go through the full SiEentries registration process, though – giving names and full details of all three team members – but no payment is required yet.

A second email came from SiEntries the next month, again termed as an ‘invitation to apply’ but this time it said an invitation had now been issued to the three of us and asked for further details and payment of the team entry donation of £225 to formally accept the invitation.

We also had to commit to raising a further £500 sponsorship as a team.

Our WhatsApp burst into life.

“We’re in,” said Sarah.

“Yaaaaaaaay!! Great news,” said Anna.

“It’s exciting!” said I. “Something to look forward to.”

This was a thought and a half. Would I manage it? I knew my teammates would smash it – Sarah is a Great Britain triathlon age grouper, for goodness sake – and I didn’t want to let them down.

There wasn’t the pressure of having to keep up with them, at least, as even though you enter as a team you don’t have to stick together on the course. Everyone can run their own race.

I am largely self-coached and drew up a basic plan of attack. Looking at the course, particularly the run which had 3,868 feet of elevation, and knowing my own weaknesses, I figured I needed to make this ‘all about the run’ and came up with a strategy.

Having had the conversation with Anna and Sarah back in the summer, I had started training for the Highland Cross a long time before we were officially notified we had a place, as I wouldn’t have had enough time to train properly for it if I had waited until then.

The training actually began with the humblest programme for any runner: the Couch 2 5k. I began in the autumn and I started with this programme because I have found, from experience, that it’s the surest way to get back into running after a lay-off without picking up an injury.

I also wanted to take it slowly because I had had surgery – my fourth foot operation and third on the left foot – in the February.

Look away if you’re squeamish but that had involved breaking two metatarsals, which had failed to properly unite after a previous operation, and grafting them with a piece of bone from my heel. They were plated back together – I still have two plates and 10 screws in my foot – and it was all an attempt to fix the complications from a previous surgery.

That in itself had been an attempt to improve a bad outcome from the original bunion surgery, which had ruined my foot function. It had left me with an overly short big toe that no longer did any load bearing. Even I could tell, from those post-op x-rays, that it wasn’t going to work well.

After more than a decade of putting up with it, I found a good surgeon who was going to sort me out but it took a couple of operations, and although the foot is much better now – I no longer fall over instantly when I stand one-legged on my left – there are some issues that have lingered.

I get intermittent pain in the foot. I’m sure there’s nerve damage and no doubt the metalwork is aggravating, but I try to compartmentalise it and manage the general situation around it.

I follow a gluten and dairy free diet much of the time, rarely drink alcohol, try to limit sugar and take supplements such as magnesium and CBD gummies. I’ve also had to be philosophical and consciously choose to run with pain if the alternative is not running.

So that’s what I was dealing with, as I planned my approach to the Highland Cross.

Looking ahead and having decided the bike would take care of itself easily enough as I had a bit of experience from doing the Loch Ness Etape and the Bealach Beag sportives a couple of years ago, I set some running targets.

I planned for a first half marathon on the road in March, the 15-mile Run Balmoral trail race in April, upped my road miles to a few 16 milers after that, did the Stornoway half marathon in May and then took it off road, getting some technical miles in and ‘time on feet’ in Harris in June.

I did two particularly useful long sessions there. These were six hours of combined running and hiking from Bowglass to Miavaig and back again, and each totalled 21 miles.

I would be very glad of them, come Highland Cross day. I reckon they really moved the needle.

I sought some advice about tapering and, before I knew it, the event was upon us.

Typically and worryingly, on the day before – with 50 miles looming large – my foot was bothering me. It was even sore as I walked round the Eastgate Centre in Inverness and I was struggling to feel positive about what I was going to experience the next day.

Somewhat despondent, I texted my husband at home.

“I’m actually dreading this. Totally regretting my choices. Thought about not going.”

“It’s a great opportunity for a fab day out in a lovely place… just enjoy it.”

“I can’t enjoy nerve pain. I need a miracle.” I was woebegone.

“Moonshot.” He was quoting my own words back to me.

What helped was thinking about all the money that had been donated to a JustGiving page I’d set up just 24 hours previously.

I had been in two minds about setting a public fundraising page, particularly as the charities don’t directly benefit most of the people I would be asking for sponsorship as we live in the islands, but when I did set it up, I was pretty floored by the responses.

Loads of people donated and posted really lovely encouraging messages.

As I reflected on ‘my choices' that night, I figured that, come what may, I was going to give this a go because so many people had sponsored me.

At the time of writing, my page has raised £745 and we are well over £1000 as a team.

It gave me something to think about during the 90-minute bus journey from Inverness to Morvich on the Saturday morning. From “I’m sure you’ll smash this challenge” to “give it laldy!” and “don’t stop long enough for the midges to catch up with you!” all the comments were a great boost to morale.

It was also really nice to see my old friend John on the bus. Yes, that same John from back in 2006 when we both heard about the Highland Cross for the first time.

He was about to do the Highland Cross for the 10th time, having moved to Inverness some years previously. It was a real sense of coming full circle.

By the time we were off the bus and walking towards registration, my head was in the game.

Sarah, Anna and I were all Highland Cross first-timers and we soaked it up. This was a beautiful place with a unique atmosphere. It felt very surreal and was all completely unknown territory.

We got our bearings around the bag drop, joined the queue for the portaloos set up in the barn for one last pee, and enjoyed some moments hanging about on the grass and people watching.

The safety helicopter was there, on top of a knoll, and Sarah climbed up to it to get her picture taken. All part of the fun.

We were the second wave to start. The first wave – the walkers – had set off two hours previously. When 11 o’clock came, the gun went – an actual real, proper gun – and we were off.

Swept along with the masses, I jogged my way through Glen Lichd, the glen on the inside of the Five Sisters of Kintail.

Starting out, I was preoccupied with pain, fearing it constantly and experiencing it in waves, and I had to do a lot of work on my state of mind in order to cope.

I tried some visualisation – picturing scudding clouds, with their similarly intermittent nature – and mindfulness helped, too. “Noticing” and “letting it go”. I kept cycling through, as the pain came and went.

And then an amazing thing happened. Somewhere around mile five, before the waterfalls, the pain turned off like a tap. Maybe that was the miracle I’d been praying for.

Of maybe the foot had just warmed up and settled down, particularly since I had stopped running and was now hiking the ups. Whatever reason, it was a blessing – and I could relax.

At this point, heading for an elevation of about 1100 feet, I was having the time of my life, enjoying this beautiful midsummer day. I’m slow, so there was no time pressure and I stopped frequently to enjoy the views and to take pictures. It was blowing my mind and the helicopter flying up and down the glen was an added excitement.

I was bringing up the rear, for sure, but chatted with some lovely folk. Everyone was so nice when they found out I was a first-timer. It’s clear the Highland Cross has a lot of returning visitors. The way everyone talked about how it was my “first one” clearly assumed there would be a second.

The support along the way was incredible, from all those involved, from the mountain rescue and the coastguards to the scouts and the tea ladies.

The scouts doing the macarena on the bridge at the Alltbeithe youth hostel really made me smile and there was a huge aid station at Athnamulloch, which had an impressive spread on offer including platters of sandwiches and urns of coffee. For a moment, I could imagine being in a big American ultra like Western States.

Athnamulloch was the turning point for me. I was about 13.5 miles at this point, just past the half marathon distance of 13.1, and that has always been a major milestone for me whenever I am on a longer run. At this point, I knew I was going to finish. I was enjoying it and I could settle into a rhythm from Anthnamulloch. From here, it’s more like a regular run, as opposed to getting up and over the hills any way you can.

The first part of the run had been about being completed immersed in the place but here I put my headphones on and tuned into the playlist that I’d put together for the occasion.

I was deeply in the zone, as I trucked along the so-called yellow brick road, enjoying listening to the tunes that had accompanied me on so many of my runs over the past eight months. Top of my chart? Till I Collapse by Eminem and Titanium by David Guetta. That would be my walk-on song for sure, as I’ve got plenty of it in my foot.

Officially, the Highland Cross run is said to be 20 miles but the actual distance is 19.35. The pain was starting to reappear in the last couple of miles but I could live with that. I was happy.

When I got to the changeover at Affric, I took a ridiculous amount of time to sort myself out. I was there for nearly 20 minutes. What can I say? I sat down.

It is hard to get moving again when you are that knackered but eventually I managed to. I did a full change of clothes, had something to eat, clipped into the bike and headed off.

Everyone had said I would “love” the bike, since so much of it was downhill – it’s also only 27 miles – but to be honest I didn’t enjoy it anywhere near as much as I enjoyed the run.

I’ve crashed my bike before and not fully recovered my confidence. I am a bit of a scaredy cat. Other folk were flying down the Fasnakyle Brae as I was creeping down.

I also managed to make the impressive mistake of going the wrong way at the junction out of Cannich. Instead of going straight ahead to Beauly – I know fine well the Highland Cross goes to Beauly – I turned right to Drumnadrochit! The marshals shouted after me, that I had gone wrong.

“Are you serious?” I shouted.

“Yes! You need to go straight!”

As I turned around and headed back, one of them looked at me with complete incredulity. “In 40 years of doing this,” she said, “nobody has ever done that before.”

I have no idea why I did that. My brain wasn’t working. Maybe it’s because I’m used to cycling to Drumnadrochit during the Etape. What the reason, it was embarrassing.

Once I was back on track, I dug in to get the miles done. The last half hour was particularly hard, and I was watching every single mile on my Garmin watch as it ticked over.

By the time I got into Beauly, I was so relieved to be finished and to unclip without falling over.

Was it emotional? Of course it was. I had completed it and I couldn’t quite believe it.

My official time was 7 hours 11 minutes 12 seconds. I was finisher 493 out of 736 at the 41st Highland Cross.

My teammate Sarah, who had finished the whole thing before I got on my bike, was the fifth lady overall and won the women’s superveteran prize.

John was running as a member of Kintail Mountain Rescue and they won the Mountain Rescue team prize. Anna gave a great account of herself too.

For me, it is always finish lines not finish times and I was delighted just to cross that line.

It just goes to show – don’t give into the fear. I did it scared and it turned out to be one of the best days of my life. Choose hope over despair every time.

I had finally done the Highland Cross.