Blackmail

L gets up at the unearthly hour of 5am to take Son to the station so that he can be back at Warwick for a 9am lecture. Despite the fact she’s only gone for less than half an hour, MD has to go through the whole welcoming a member of his pack home routine, loudly. So now the whole street are awake, including Daughter who is on half term break and is particularly unhappy about it. After which, it hardly seems worth us going back to sleep, so we don’t.

Talking of MD. L saw this, the World Loudest Bark, and thought of him. He should have been there. Oddly there doesn’t seem to be a collie among them.

The understatement of the year award goes to the organisers of the Birmingham Half Marathon who have admitted the event needs ‘fine tuning’... They’re referring to the delays crossing the finish line, which were so obvious they couldn’t deny they’d happened. They seem to be in denial about everything else. Even then they blame that problem on medical incidents which ‘had to be dealt with quickly’. Which wasn’t the case. There may have been a medical incident but there always is somebody who’s need medical attention after a half marathon and they would/should have been prepared for that. The hold up was actually caused by the handing out of foil blankets, water and collecting timing chips far too close to the finish line. That was obvious when I arrived, as it was already starting to back up then.

Steve Hollingworth, Birmingham City Council's director of sport and events, goes on to mention the ‘great feedback’ they’ve had. Hmmm. There are over 300 messages across three forums on Runners World and rising by the minute. Probably only two or three of them could be described as ‘great feedback’, the rest are highly critical.

Something I learn from looking at all the post race comments is that everyone rates the Reading Half Marathon as a really big, well run marathon - 12,300 finished this years in March.



It’s the world’s 19th largest Half Marathon according to 2009 figures and second only to the Great North Run in the UK. 5th biggest in Europe.

1. 30th Goteborg, Sweden 40,523
2. Bupa Great North Run, UK 37,582
3. OneAmerica 500 Festival, USA 30,281
4. Country Music, USA 22,920
5. P.F. Chang’s, Arizona, USA 22,111
6. Paris, France 21,552
7. Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio, USA 20,077
8. Vattenfall Berliner, Germany 17,888
9. Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas, USA 17,880
10. Rock ‘n’ Roll, USA 15,729
11. Rock ‘n’ Roll Seattle, USA 15,677
12. Wien-Energie, Austria 15,483
13. Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicago, USA 14,459
14. Chicago, USA 13,532
15. Nike Women’s, USA 13,421
16. Walt Disney World, USA 12,444
17. ING Philadelphia, USA 12,379
18. Medellin Int’l, Columbia 12,100
19. Reading, UK 11,867
20. Disneyland, USA 11,645

It’s already almost full, so if we’re interested we’ll have to get in quick. L says she’s game. I assume she means for the race.

However it’s the same day as the Kilomathon. Which I’d like to support, as it's local, but they’re being very cagey about the route, which is worrying. I have no wish to do circuits of Derby’s new ring road, if it’s finished by then.

I check the Kilomathon website to see if there’s any update on the route and my support suddenly evaporates. They say they have changed the entry system to 'something much more beneficial to charities and also gives runners the option to enter a fantastic road race for just £5'... if you raise at lot of money for charity that is. That's blackmail. If you don’t fund raise then its £45, which is an inflation busting increase of 50% on last year's price of £30, plus a £2.75 booking fee of course. I'm thoroughly fed up with running being hijacked by charities. Reading isn’t that far is it?

(Monday 25th October)

Trench Foot

This morning we defrost the car and drive down the M1 to Huncote in Leicestershire for a spot of cross country, something by the name of the Huncote Hash. The race is on because unlike the Caythorpe run last week it’s not on road so won’t be as slippery. That’s the theory anyway.

Cross country is not my thing at all. I prefer any terrain that I run on to be smooth and tarmac if at all possible, kind of road like, certainly not muddy. Luckily, the fact it’s so damn cold should render the mud meaningless.

I have my River Trent hardened shoes on, the ones I used for Survival of the Fittest and they still have bits of genuine Trent algae hanging off them. They will feel at home in this race, as there’s a stream that we are required to run down. L considers wellies but in the end pulls her orienteering shoes out of what they thought was their peaceful retirement.

As we stash the dogs in the car and head down to the start, they immediately start a duet of howling, totally embarrassing but we can’t give into such blackmail. We ignore them, fully expecting someone to report us to the RSPCA.

We line up for the start amongst a group of cowboys and Indians; fancy dress seems to be the order of the day. Some of the girls are in saris; they have perhaps come as the wrong type of Indians. There’s even a gorilla lurking somewhere near the back of the pack.

I start well but then concede a lot of places. I’m not pushing myself too hard on such a perilous course. I have bigger fish to fry coming up and this event is basically just an excuse to get some miles in. How many miles, I’m not sure, as they are very vague about the length of the course, 6 miles, 6.5, maybe more. I also don’t have the correct footwear on and some of the hills they have us on are quite steep. I almost slide off a few of them. A camber up one ice covered hill, the surface seemingly polished by the runners ahead, and go sliding most of the way back down again. Despite struggling to stand up at times, I still think I’m doing quite well until a gun toting cowboy comes running past me.



Rumour has it that the course offers spectacular views of the surrounding villages and countryside but unfortunately I can’t look up to see because I’m too worried about where I’m putting my feet.

Towards the end, some parts of the course have thawed out a bit and I finally get some traction, managing to run at something approaching normal race pace but then just as I’m getting in to it, we come to the ‘highlight’ of the run. The wade through the stream. Thankfully the earlier runners seem to have broken the ice on the surface. The water though is still feet numbingly cold. My first thoughts are that thankfully it’s only a short section of water. Then once I’m up to mid calf in the freezing water, I think what a long stint it is. As I emerge out the other side, I have to look down to check that my feet as still attached to my ankles as I can now no longer feel them. It takes a good few minutes to warm them back up again and then thankfully it’s the finish.



My time was over 54 minutes for however far it was. They describe it as a fun event, a chance to fun and blow away the Christmas and New Year excesses. Doesn’t stop them disqualifying the first two runners home, who were minutes ahead of the rest of the field and it’s suspected that they found a short cut somewhere.

I fetch the dogs from the car and wait for L to come in. She duly does, managing to hold off a late surge from the gorilla.



Afterwards we retire to Scruffys, to nurse our trench foot and to try out their Sunday lunches. They are all out of beef, so their roast consists of grilled best steak, which is a rather nice variation. The soup starter is also rather tasty and filling, particularly when I remind L of her resolution to cut down on her bread consumption, which means I get double. I’m always thinking of her wellbeing.

(Photos Huncote Harriers AC)