Running – I Walk Alone

A day at the races

The first Sunday in February found Commando and I leaving home at an ungodly hour to head to Goodwood Motor Circuit. We were off for a day at the races, but not in quite the way you would expect for such a famous venue. To most people, the name Goodwood conjures up race cars and chequered flags. The race track, on the picturesque Sussex Downs near Chichester, was the venue for Britain’s first post-war race meeting in September 1948. Graham Hill had his first single seat race on the course. In 1962, Stirling Moss ended his career at Goodwood when he crashed his Lotus during the Glover Trophy. Donald Campbell demonstrated his car, Bluebird here, in 1960 and 1962, before breaking the land speed record in it in 1964. We were at Goodwood for a race of a very different kind, though.

Parkrun tourism and a wedding

Our parkrun tourism on Saturday 4 June was a little out of the ordinary. It was the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, and Commando wasn’t running because of a minor injury, but that wasn’t what made it strange. It was actually the wedding day of two of our friends, Helen and Andy, and they were beginning their nuptials at the twenty-fifth Bartley parkrun. Bartley parkrun is in Totton, so at least we didn’t have too early a start, although it took us a while to find the venue. It’s also a very new parkrun. Race number one was on 18th December 2021, and Helen and Andy have been part of the core volunteer team from the outset.

A blanket, afternoon tea and the Dave Hawkins pacers

Normally, writing blog posts is my weekend job. I set aside a couple of hours on Saturday and Sunday to throw together a few posts and then schedule them to appear during the week. Last weekend was a touch on the busy side. There was no time to rest, never mind write anything. What was I up to, you may wonder? Well, other than the usual stuff, I finished making a special baby blanket and went to a posh afternoon tea come baby shower for beautiful mother-to-be, Nicole. This, and the walk to Ocean Village and back, took up most of Saturday.

The last Elizabethan Sunday – Overton

I spent the last Sunday of the second Elizabethan era in Overton, a chocolate box worthy Hampshire village between Andover and Basingstoke. Obviously, I didn’t know it was the last Sunday in Elizabeth II’s reign. Truth to tell, I didn’t know much about Overton, either. My knowledge extended only as far as the Overton Five Mile race I’d come to photograph, and the Bombay Sapphire distillery we’d passed on the edge of the village. Actually, I only knew about the gin factory because I’d noticed the polished metal cylinders as we passed. A little Googling told me the distillery had moved from Cheshire to this disused paper mill, Laverstoke Mill, in 2014. The visitor centre looks well worth checking out, if you’re a gin fan.

Return to Dorney Lake

Back in 2015, Commando ran a pre-London Marathon twenty mile event at Dorney Lake, a sporting venue built for the 2012 Olympic rowing events and now owned and used by Eton College. I’d had a wonderful few hours wandering along the Thames towpath to Windsor and back. When he said he had a race there on the last Sunday in August, I was excited to tag along. It was only a 10k this time, not twenty miles. I knew I wouldn’t have time to walk to Windsor, but I looked forward to another walk along the towpath.

An Omicron Christmas

Twelve days before Christmas 2021, Kim and I were wrapped up against the cold, up to our ankles in mud and taking photographs of yet another cross country race. Meanwhile, the media were doing their best to whip up a storm about the new COVID variant, Omicron. It was spreading like wildfire, but everyone I knew who’d had it described it as a mild cold. Most only knew they had it at all because they’d taken a routine test. Some had no symptoms other than a positive test result. Even so, there was plenty of hype about cancelling Christmas and locking the country down again.

Time machine and preparing to launch

Much of March has been taken up with going through edits and checking the manuscript and proof copies of the paperback and kindle version of Land Fit For Heroes. The process is slow, and it feels quite strange to become so intimate again, with a book I began writing in October 2020. So much water has passed under the bridge since then and all the characters have changed and grown in the subsequent books, it feels a little like stepping into a time machine. Combined with the decidedly peculiar weather (we had snow last week for heaven’s sake), my walking has been curtailed somewhat. Despite all this, I did manage a couple of short walks that didn’t involve just going up the hill for milk.

A two race weekend and a new variant

December 2021 brought a new COVID variant, Omicron and a two race weekend. The former didn’t sound like too much of a worry, all the reports said it was mild, more a sniffly cold than anything. The latter was a different matter. The first of the races, on Saturday 4 December, was a Hampshire Cross Country event in Aldershot, forty odd miles from home. Predictably, we got a bit lost. Things in the car got fraught and we arrived cross and later than planned. There was a rather interesting looking statue on the opposite side of the car park but the women’s race was about to start so there was no time to have a proper look at it.

Typical!

Back to November 2021, and the Manor Farm CC6 came around very fast. It seemed just days since we’d been walking the course talking about marshal points, although it had actually been weeks. It also felt very early to be getting out of bed, throwing on warm clothes and a Dryrobe and setting off into the frosty morning air. Truth to tell, it was early. We had to pick Sergio up on the way and we had to arrive at 8:15 for a pre race briefing. Still, I was quite excited at the prospect of getting a marshalling spot somewhere on the farm. Secretly, I was hoping to be near the alpacas.

Snapshots of normality

One of the things we really missed during all the COVID madness was the normal round of running events. Parkrun was cancelled, as were all the races we’d normally have gone to. It was a joy when parkrun was finally allowed to restart in July 2021, and later in the year, there were two big races to look forward to. The first of these was the Southampton Marathon in early September. As usual, I went along with my camera to take photos. Runners do like to have their photographs taken so these events are always busy occasions for me. As it turned out, this one was busier than I could have ever expected.

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