I wanna be on TV... (Part 2)

So last time I was going on about how my husband doesn’t really want to go and see Green Day with me. I think I wrote something like “In actual fact, my husband doesn’t want to go and see them at all – he doesn’t even like them that much and he hates arena concerts – it’s a measure of his love for me, I feel, that he’s prepared to come with me to a venue he loathes, to not sit with me throughout a concert he doesn’t even want to go to and see a band he doesn’t particularly like. Oh well – I’d do it for him if, say, Slayer played somewhere and he really wanted to go...” In fact, I know that’s exactly what I wrote because I’ve just copy and pasted it out of my last entry. (oh the wonders of modern technology). Anyway, as you can see from my last entry, one of the reasons he doesn’t want to go and see Green Day (apart from not particularly liking their music) is he cannot stand arena concerts. Anything, he says, that gets that big, becomes soul-less. He much prefers smaller gigs. Indeed, one of his fondest memories of watching live music, is the time he watched the Red Hot Chilli Peppers play at the Sheffield Hallam University Student Union to an audience of around 8 people. He tells me (I wasn’t there – we hadn’t met at that point) that he overcame the (non-existent) security to jump on the stage, pat Anthony Keidos on the back and jumped back into the audience (no crowd-surfing though – not enough folk for that). Obviously, this was in the time before the Red Hot Chilli Peppers were as big as they are now. In fact, I don’t think anyone had ever heard of them at that point – well, only a handful anyway. (It’s a fair guess that out of that 8 people, a few people were just there because they’d wandered in to get drunk – as students do. I’m sure that all 8 were not bona-fide fans – although I’m equally sure they were after the event). Anyway, I digress. No, this has not become a blog dedicated to Green Day/the Red Hot Chilli Peppers or indeed, any other band with colours in their name (for which, I must admit, I seem to have a penchant. I also really like Pink Floyd. I’m not a big Deep Purple fan though). But I’ll get to the point. The point BEING: I did the Great Manchester Run on Sunday and it was MUCH TOO BIG. MUCH MUCH TOO BIG. I can’t really think of any other way to describe it, apart from in those terms:

TOO BIG

And, as a result, and just as my husband says, it had become soulless. The Great Edinburgh, with 10,000 runners, was fantastic. We all went off together. There was a great vibe and a great atmosphere of excitement on the day. It was also a challenging run in beautiful surroundings (the Great Manchester was not a challenging run in not very beautiful surroundings at all). I can say this – I was born in Manchester. I spent the first 9 years of my life there. I remember it being a bit of a... well, shall we say, not a great-looking city back then, but it did have a kind of industrial charm to it. Now, it’s been regenerated and there’s just an awful lot of glass. There’s nothing charming at all about running down a by-pass. I liked the Hilton building (Britain’s biggest skyscraper or something like that?) But that was about it. I do think the Manchester United football players could have stood outside Old Trafford to cheer us on, just like the snooker players stood outside the Crucible during the Sheffield Half-Marathon and cheered us mere mortals on in our sporting endeavours. Sadly, there was a dearth of Man Utd players outside. (I suppose this might have been a good thing – it was raining quite hard and they wouldn’t want to ruin their designer hairstyles in the first instance – also, in the second as I was running past there was a bloke running next to me singing: “We’re going to buy your football ground, we’re going to burn it to the ground...” Not a Man U fan I feel – and the players might not have felt like cheering us on at all if they had heard that).

The run was totally flat (one slight incline – I scarcely felt it after the Great Edinburgh and the Sheffield Half). The only challenging element of it really was that you couldn’t really run because of the sheer volume of runners who were trying to run too. It was run a bit... walk a bit because you can’t get past the person who is walking there and having a chat with her friend at the same time... and then run a bit when you get past them... oh and then walk a bit until you can dodge round the man dressed as an octopus.... (surely that’s cheating – he’s got 8 legs!) and then there’s Scooby Doo to get past... and oh God, I think I’ll just walk the rest of the way, this is too stressful. As a result my time wasn’t great (although it wasn’t disgraceful – I still did it in an hour). Then, just as I crossed the finishing line, the heavens opened. I got soaked. I then had to wait for two hours for a train (I’d reserved a seat on the cheap train, but had to wait until 2.20 pm for it) being utterly sodden in Manchester Piccadilly. I’ve got to say, I must have looked like a tramp. I know I got that thing where you smell slightly of damp dog, because you’re clothes were a bit stinky and then they got rained on. I was in my scruffy jogging bottoms and my trainers smell so much now that they’re starting to take on a life of their own. I genuinely felt sorry for the woman who had to sit next to me on the train on the way back because I could smell them – I’m sure she could too. In fact, the way they’re going, the amount I must have sweated into them by now, they’ll be taking me for a run – I won’t need to put in any effort at all – which is a good thing because next week I’ve got the Buxton Half-Marathon. Not sure how many runners (at least 32,500 less than 33,000 though) I will probably come last – the first three miles of the 13.1 are uphill. Yes, the first three miles. Up to Axe Edge – then down – then a further (even more challenging climb, the organisers felt) of 600 feet in one mile up another hill (the name of which I’ve forgotten). Oh well, I’ll go and do my best. I’ll put my trainers on and let them go... Go on trainers... Run free... Oh and can I come along too for the ride?

(Oh, incidentally, I didn’t make it onto TV this time either – it was on BBC2 at 5pm last night – they interviewed the poor sod who was running dressed as Scooby Doo though).