Willie Rennie thought he was just going to speak at an Aberdeenshire dinner last Friday night and then nip home on the Saturday morning.

One of the dinner guests had other plans and, as Willie said, “dragooned” him into taking part in the Banchory Beast 10km obstacle race the next day, where he actually finished fifth. You can see some of the obstacles he tackled here.

The Deeside Piper has the story and reports a surprising confession:

I was dragooned into running it by Bert McIntosh who owns the land,” explained Rennie. “We were guests at a dinner the week before and he said: ‘I want you to take part in this Beast,’ but I didn’t really know what he meant.

I was going to do a run on the way back down towards Glen Cova anyway so I had some running kit with me.”

Though he knew not what he’d gotten himself into until the day of the event, Rennie ran in the first wave, and was the second person over the finish line. Despite his busy schedule as a senior political figure, he regularly manages to clock between 27 and 37 miles per week.

When there’s boring debates on in parliament,” said Rennie, “I sneak out and train. And I can train a lot as there’s quite a lot of boring debates.

Given that the small Scottish Liberal Democrat team have been so effective in forcing through changes in SNP government policy on everything from stop and search to college places to childcare to armed police, I’m sure we can forgive him the odd wee run up Arthur’s Seat.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings