Cool Running Ramblings : Issue 10
17 miles down memory lane
Now that long distance travel is far more accessible than it was say fifty years ago, the likelihood is that you are reading this whilst in a town other than the one in which you grew up. That being the case, when was the last time you went back to the neighbourhood you grew up in with a reminiscent misty eyed smile? This weekend I did just that in Stone, Staffordshire where I spent a very pleasant Saturday catching up with my dad and a couple of old school friends who still live in the area before turning in for a good night’s rest in preparation for Sunday’s seventeen mile training run.
At 9.30am, with a suitably nostalgic soundtrack in my ears, I set off on the route I had been planning for the last week or so. The run took me past the hotel I used to deliver papers to and the football pitch where I scored my only ever goals for the school team, two in the same match against our arch rivals, Christchurch, in a thumping five nil win. Onward I ran, past the house of the first girl I kissed and into the estate which was home to me from 1977 until 1990. Past the playing fields where we used to play football until it was too dark to see the ball and past the brook where I bent the front wheel of my sister’s bike in an unsuccessful attempt at jumping it (I’d had my doubts about the angle of that ramp from the start). Possibly as a result of similar failures, a chain link fence has now been erected along the brook’s bank to stop today’s crop of local daredevils attempting similar spectacular stunts. Sad that they will never feel the pride and joy of landing their first jump really, (sigh) the price of progress…
Next up I passed the house of my first love (now married and living in Kenya apparently) then around the next corner I slowed almost to a walk as I took a good look at our old house before heading on past the fields where I used to walk my dog and the pub where I both drank and pulled my first pints. I jogged by the field where I used to play cricket in the long summer holidays before reaching my old high school and the start of the infamous “Oulton Triangle” which we were forced to run before games lessons.
None of my memories of the Oulton Triangle were good and it was always with a sulky teenage droop of the shoulders that it was approached but having now seen this one and a third mile circuit on a map I wondered why we’d all hated it so much in our early teens. I soon found out as although none of the three uphill sections were particularly steep, the middle one of the three was pretty long and kept getting steeper toward the end, that’s sadistic games teachers for you!
Once back at the school I passed the playground where I earned the cane from the head master for throwing a conker which narrowly missed the deputy head, Mrs Whitehurst. The conker was aimed at Steven Lockley but he ducked and she didn’t, oops! I then went down through the town centre which has changed quite a bit since I last lived there twenty years ago, all pedestrianisation and hanging baskets, though thankfully still packed with thriving local businesses and only a couple of national chains in sight. At the end of the high street I passed the church I used to sing in as a lad and the kebab shop I invariably ended up in when out with the lads. Another couple of miles and I arrived at my mate Martyn’s house for a well earned drink and some jelly babies before setting off with him along the canal back into town to do it all over again but this time with an old school chum to laugh about it with.
So there we are, my longest ever run covered with surprising ease, apart from a bit of thigh chaff which had me walking like John Wayne for the rest of the day. Just goes to show that if you give yourself something to think about or someone to chat to while you’re running then the miles just fly by! Valentine’s day next Sunday and being the old charmer that I am I’ll be kicking Ness out of bed around 9.00ish to look after Ella while I set off for a half marathon. Who says romance is dead?
Keep up the training! Only 10 weeks to go before I can ceremoniously unplug the alarm clock, yaay!!!
