Saturday 9 to Saturday 16 August - two parkruns, a picnic, a camp and a walk

With Wythenshawe parkrun being called off for a couple of weeks due to the invasion of a concert venue onto its course, Sue and I opted to enjoy the parkrun local to Sue's mother's residence in Solihull. Brueton parkrun is a well attended venue in a pleasant park.

490 participants slowly gathered at a congested start line. I started at the back as usual, but managed to overtake a few folk and finish in 30:57, position 319. Sue was much quicker. Full results are here.

At the finish

Warming down

After picking up Sue's mother, we headed to St Nicholas' Park in Warwick, where we got a good view of the flotilla of craft on the River Avon before heading for a picnic site for over twenty of Sue's relatives.

Just near our picnic spot was a lovely Golden Rain Tree.

A selection of posh dogs seemed to get on well.

The afternoon couldn't end without a group photo and a scattering of some of Richard's ashes, so he wasn't entirely absent from this annual event.

By Wednesday it was our turn again to host a granddaughter for the day. We took her to Sweet Knowl campsite near Peak Forest for her first experience of camping. The tent was easily set up, and it was easily moved from the spot below when a large group assembled nearby.

A shady spot under a tree brought relief from the sun on the hot day, and it was a good venue for colouring, and for farmyard fun. From time to time a couple of curious donkeys in a neighbouring field were given large clumps of grass from the campsite.

After a busy afternoon, and a change of clothing resulting from a water fight, grandad cooked sausages for dinner. The child preferred peppers and cucumber and houmous dip, together with lots of plums and other assorted produce gleaned from Hazel's allotment. We had nice neighbours. Janice and Alan were a retired couple in a campervan that would soon be taking them to northern Spain. The tent next door was of the 'Buckingham' variety - a palace compared with our small tent. A ten year old called Safiya made friends with our four year old.

 

After dinner, a request to go to bed, as she wanted to spend as nuch time as possible in the tent, which was a sort of secondary playground as opposed to being a place in which to sleep.

For a girl whose favourite colour is purple, my old sleeping bag was a resounding success!

Eventually we watched the sun go down over the Peak District on a lovely evening free from insects before adjourning for stories, and eventually sleep. The late night resulted in a sleep in until 6:45, which was appreciated by us all, as she normally wakes much earlier than that.

After the successful camping trip, granddaughter was handed over to more grandparents in Glossop and Sue and I had a relaxing day before heading to the Bells of Peover for the last of Andrew's short evening walks of the summer.

Andrew reminded us that the 'Bells' bore no reference to nearby church bells, but to the sirname of former owners. 

On our short walk, we passed a weir that is fed by an overgrown pond. Even here in the depths of rural Cheshire there is an industrial history to uncover.

Further on, we know we are on familiar ground when we pass this old cottage with a lovely front garden.

The evening light was glorious as we passed through a few fields on the way back to the Bells.

The Bells of Peover is proud of past glories.

We were soon rehydrating outside the pub, before Sue handed out produce from Hazel's allotment and we dispersed until next time.

Here's the pleasant 3km route.

To conclude this posting, a few pictures from today's parkrun at Burnage. I met Jan and Owen at the start, and Paul and Rufus joined us for the run. It's a fairly slow course with a few short inclines and some steps, but really very pleasand, following in part the Trans Pennine Trail beside the River Mersey.

I managed a respectable 31:54, with Paul just ahead, and Owen and Jan a few minutes behind. Here they are at the finish.

Full results are here.

Burnage RFC clubhouse provides coffees for £1.50, dispensed via a tank of hot water - add your own milk from a nearby table - and they have bacon butties etc ready to go, so very little waiting and queueing. Wythenshawe could learn from this. Owen's mum Jenny joined us, and I was pleased to be relieved of most of the runner beans etc that Sue had required me to dispose of.

Saturday 1 July 2023 - Brueton parkrun #604

Having driven down to Solihull on Friday evening, we assembled in a squad of 470 runners at the Brueton parkrun. Sue got in the mix at the front, whilst I assumed my usual position at the back.

Here we are at the start.

And before that, we just milled around. This is the fourth time we've done this 5km run on good surfaces in the large and pleasant park, but the course seems to change every time we visit.

I got around in a leisurely 29 minutes - position 269 out of 470 - so I did manage to pass 200 people. Sue managed to avoid the finish, so she didn't get a time! There's a message here: even if you collect a finishing token and get properly scanned, you still need to actually go through the finishing funnel.

Full results are here.

Sunday 15 October 2017 – The Birmingham International Marathon

After completing the Toulouse Marathon last October, I thought it might be a good challenge to try one of these events every year. I was a bit nervous about going to Toulouse again as I doubted it could match up to last year’s experience, so I chose Birmingham’s first event of this nature in recent years.

Getting there was a bit easier than getting to Toulouse, as Sue’s parents live in Birmingham and it was an easy 30 minute drive to the Alexander Stadium for the start.

I’d tried to get vaguely fit for this by running for 4 km every now and then (about 16 times) whilst on our recent trip to Canada, plus three parkruns, on the last of which one of my hamstrings ‘pulled’. That was nearly a month ago and I hadn’t been able to run properly since then.

I decided to take part anyway, and to walk round the course if necessary. So I took up a place at the very back of the 5200 strong field of runners. Half of them had set off at 8.30 in the ‘red’ wave of faster runners. I waited behind the ‘longer than 6 hours 30 minutes’ flag for the 9.30 start. Everyone was very jolly and relaxed; there were no nervous ‘elite’ runners here.

The official start is out of sight to the right in these pictures. We watched about half the field start, then there was a three minute gap before the next ‘surge’, and those of us at the back eventually got started around 9.45.

I’d been chatting to an interesting chap, Taiwo Opesan, a 48 year old of Nigerian heritage who lives in Hale and coaches amateur footballers. We stayed together for the first hour, until I had to stop to slacken a shoe lace. That’s not happened to me before, and I had to stop later to slacken the other one. Apart from that my feet were fine despite being in trainers that are past their sell by date, and so long as I shuffled as opposed to striding out, my hamstring wasn’t too painful, though I did get some soreness behind the knees that took a few days to subside.

I caught up with Taiwo again, but even though my own pace slowed, he fell behind, finishing in 5.41. The support around the course was excellent, with lots of water and jelly babies being handed out. Sadly the only person with bananas was Sue, whose banana handout sped me towards the finish.

There was lots of chatting, with an assortment of folk. I find it takes my mind off the continuous effort of running if I can chat to somebody on such an occasion. The running is so slow that getting out of breath isn’t a problem, it’s the legs that are suffering…

Anyway, despite not being able to match my Toulouse timings I only gradually slowed, and like many of those around me (“we can slow down now, we’ll meet our target”) I managed to finish in under five hours quite easily, if totally unexpectedly.

Sue and I adjourned for essential rehydration fluid after I’d finished. We could look down on the course, which finishes with a rather cruel hill, so there was no last minute sprint this time.

Café Rouge is really a restaurant, but they seemed quite happy to serve only fluids.

Ah, now I’m feeling much better!

Here are a couple of screen dumps from the results website.

There were just over 5200 participants, of whom about 44 were aged over 65. One of the other people in my age group was a TGO Challenger, Stan Appleton, who took just 4 hours 18 minutes. My time, 17 minutes slower than my time in Toulouse, placed me 16th out of 31 men in my age group, in which there were also six women, all a bit slower.

Great news though – my sub 5 hour time makes me eligible to enter the 2019 London Marathon on a ‘good for age’ basis, so I won’t need to try to enter via the dreaded ballot. That’s some way off though; anything can happen before then. Meanwhile, here are (mainly for my own benefit) some more stats.