VIEW FROM THE BACK OF
THE PACK – OCTOBER 2014
If you are planning an outdoor event in October, then I
suggest you schedule it for the second Saturday. This is when the Parrett Trail
Relay is run, and every year we finish in glorious sunshine in the garden of
the Wynyard’s Gap pub. The relay starts at the coast north-west of Bridgwater,
then follows the course of the River Parrett, veering away from it in places
over a route of about 48 miles. Legs 3 and 4 pass through the areas which
dominated last winter’s news programmes, where the river had not been dredged,
and the floods would not subside. Our leg 3 runners, Dave Carnell and Victoria
Barnett, were late meeting up, and had to drive down a road that was supposedly
closed in order to get to the start in time. They then enjoyed an interesting
run past a lot of the houses that are being repaired from last winter’s floods,
just in time for this winter.
When they were starting to run I received a worried call
from Dan Cantrell whose co-runner, Donna Elliott, had been drafted in as a late
replacement 2 days before the race. There was no sign of her and he would need
to start soon. Dan is notoriously poor at navigation, so we were relying on
Donna to show him the way, as well as needing her to run for her team. In the
end Dan had to start without her and find his own way. All was going well until
he reached a place where the path was closed for the flood works. He claims
that he took advice from a local councillor on a bicycle, who told him the
closure only applied to vehicles. Dan climbed round the fencing, sidestepped
the protesting security guard, and ran off, leaving the councillor and the
guard in heated debate. This seems to be a blatant bid to win the club’s annual
PR Award, ‘for bringing the club into disrepute’. Donna meanwhile had started 7
minutes after everyone else but then followed the correct route and met up with
Dan at the end, where they were both delighted to see Jackie England, who
kindly drove them back to their cars, so they did not
have to run back past the indignant security guard.
The organisers were disappointed with the number of entries
this year so have asked how the event could be improved. My suggestion was that
each team should have 2 batons, with a runner starting at each end. The aim
would then be to meet somewhere in the middle. This would save time, and add an
element of uncertainty, given the risk that runners get lost and fail to meet
up. My co-panellist, Mr Les Knott-Bother suggested that they scrap all the
running and begin the race in the pub garden. Each team would then have to send
a runner to the bar, bring back drinks for all, down the drinks, and then send
the next runner, until the whole team had completed the course.
In other news, I forgot to mention last month that the
fastest hairdresser in the West won the ‘Super Vet’ prize at the Bridgwater
Half Marathon. This does not mean that she has branched out into animal
medicine, but instead refers, rather unflatteringly, to her age. At the October
Street 5K Maiden Newton Runners won 5 of the categories, which reflects the
number of speedy runners now in the club, though I am pleased to say that we
also have plenty of slow runners. In fact I was recently reading a PG Wodehouse
book, where he describes a butler as being ‘designed for stability not speed’,
which would be a good description of many of us in Maiden Newton Runners.
VIEW FROM THE
BACK OF THE PACK – NOVEMBER 2014
Last month I mentioned that the fastest hairdresser in the
west had won the ‘Supervet’ category at the Bridgwater Half Marathon. This
category reflected her age rather than her skills in animal medicine, but she
is a spring chicken compared to some of our members. Talking of chickens, the
world’s oldest marathon runner, Fauja Singh, began running after playing the
local sport of ‘chase the rooster’. Older readers who want to take up running
could also start by playing ‘chase the rooster’, or they could chase any animal
of their choice, though I would caution against playing ‘chase the tortoise’
after one of my work colleagues tripped over one of his tortoises, sustaining a
nasty injury to his leg (the man’s leg, not the tortoise’s leg, so far as I
know the tortoise was startled but unhurt, thanks to its protective shell).
But I digress. The point about mentioning older runners was
to celebrate the fantastic achievement of my fellow Maiden Newton Runner, Dave
Butt, who has won the Over 60s category in the Great Britain duathlon trials.
Dave will therefore be travelling to Madrid next year to represent Great
Britain, and Maiden Newton Runners, in the European Championships. The duathlon
is comprised of a 5K run, a 25K bike ride and another 5K run, all of which Dave
performs at an alarming speed. Dave tells me that he is looking forward to wearing
the GB colours, and to the soothing attentions of the team masseur. I hope he
won’t forget to pack the Maiden Newton Runners club flag so that if he wins
gold our colours can be run up the flagpole, and the stadium can echo to the
sound of our club anthem, ‘Slow Down, You Move Too Fast’.
Closer to home, the darker evenings have seen us dusting off
our headtorches and hi-viz clothing. In late October we did an evening run with
a Thomas Hardy theme, starting at Max Gate and heading for his cottage in Thorncombe
Woods. Unfortunately we lost our bearings on the heath and ran round in circles
for a while as if using our headtorches to recreate the scene in The Return of
the Native when the lights of glow worms ‘dotted the hillside like stars of a
low magnitude’. Eventually we found our way back to town in time for curry
night at The Trumpet Major, which probably wasn’t an option for Thomas Hardy
when he was planning an evening out 100 years ago.
With Christmas coming it is time for this column’s
traditional running question about what to buy the runner in your life. As
always, my co-panellist Mr Les Knott-Bother was full of the Christmas spirit
(once I had warmed him up with some mulled wine and mince pies). I told him
about a new training option for runners, which is a weighted vest, designed to
help build endurance. His suggestion is to save money and follow his approach
of wearing a string vest and carrying the extra weight yourself. When it comes
to stocking fillers I struggled to persuade Mr Les Knott-Bother of the merits
of sport socks (no need for socks to be anything but nylon), energy gels (never
eat anything that comes in a sachet) or deodorants (they encourage people to
make themselves sweaty) but in the end we reached agreement on the best thing
to give a runner this Christmas. The ideal present is a box of luxury
chocolates, which can give a welcome energy boost before
a run, after a run or instead of a run.
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