53 miles on a flared Achilles: what the Highland Fling taught me about skills under pressure

Part of Stories that stick.

The flare-up

In the lead-up to the Highland Fling, my Achilles flared.

The timing could hardly have been worse. I'd just come off my highest training weeks. That is the point in a build when you are meant to feel the work paying off, when the fitness is there and the only job left is to stay healthy and arrive fresh.

Instead, for weeks, I did almost nothing.

Anyone who has trained for something long knows what that does to your head. You count the days. You test it every morning. You start to wonder whether the fitness you built is quietly draining away while you sit still. You rehearse the conversation where you tell people you aren't starting after all.

Getting to the start line took real mental strength. It was touch and go.

Race day

On the 29th of August 2026 I still ran it. Fifty-three miles along the West Highland Way. Twelve hours, twenty-nine minutes and twenty-six seconds. It counted as my result in the 2026 Scottish Athletics Ultra Trail Championships.

I want to be honest about what made the difference, because it wasn't fitness. After weeks of almost nothing, I was not in the shape I had hoped to be in.

What made the difference was how I ran it.

The best-managed race I've run

I managed that race better than any before. I was conservative. I stuck to the plan.

That sounds simple. It isn't. In an ultra there are a hundred small moments that invite you to abandon the plan: a stretch where you feel good and want to bank time, a runner going past you, a low patch where you stop doing the basics because you are too tired to think about them. In past races, I haven't always resisted them.

This time, the Achilles changed the maths. I was so anxious about dropping out because of it that I had no room for heroics. Every decision ran through the same filter: does this keep me in the race? If it didn't, I didn't do it.

The odd result was that the anxiety made me calmer. With so little margin, I stopped improvising and simply did what I had prepared to do. I finally stayed cool under pressure. I followed the plan when it counted.

I don't think I suddenly learned anything new on that day. Everything I used, I already knew. The difference was that, for once, I actually applied it when the pressure was on.

What I bring back to work

That's exactly what I bring back to work.

We teach people skills. We run the sessions, build the practice, check the understanding. On a quiet Tuesday, most people can show you that they know what to do.

But the hard question is whether those skills hold when the pressure arrives. When the deadline is real. When the stakes are high and the room is tense. When there is a shortcut on offer and it looks attractive. That is the moment the training was for, and it is also the moment we rarely see.

My race didn't go well because I knew the plan. I had known plans before and abandoned them. It went well because, under real pressure, the plan was the thing I reached for. Knowing and applying under pressure are not the same, and the gap between them is where a lot of good training quietly disappears.

I don't have a neat answer to that. I'm not sure anyone does. But the Fling made the question feel very concrete to me.

Over to you

What are your thoughts? Can people in your organisations apply their training under pressure when it counts? I'd love to know.