“Scale the hills and you'll be rewarded with spectacular views over the Peak District”

And that’s what the Runners’ World website had to say about the Buxton Half-Marathon. Now, before I wrote this blog up I was fully convinced that what I’d have to say would go something like this “And the only view I got was of my knees as I was sick through them.” I was absolutely convinced today was going to be my worst event. After all, the first three miles (yes, that’s the first THREE miles) is uphill. This is followed by a downhill bit and then more uphill, and then the course undulates for a while (in short, more uphill) followed by another really steep uphill bit and then finally, just at the end when you can’t take anymore another bloody uphill bit through the Buxton University of Derby campus – but I wasn’t sick through my knees, so I can’t write that.

In actual fact – just blowing my own trumpet here – but I did rather well. Well, I wasn’t last and I didn’t have to call out the air ambulance or mountain rescue to come and get me, and so that’s what I rate as “doing rather well”. I also finished it in 2 hours 21 mins – which is only 7 minutes slower than the time I completed the (flat) Sheffield Half-Marathon course in. I have to admit, I did NOT run the entire course. In fact, I did most of the uphill sections at a walk – and it was rather pleasant – the company was good (I’ve never met a friendlier bunch of runners), the atmosphere was good and the scenery can only be described as stunning. The view from the top of Axe Edge and the views of the Dragon’s Back really were a reward in themselves.

It was also exceptionally well-organised. Marshalls directing you at every twist and turn on the course, cattle grids covered and manned by volunteers from Buxton Mountain Rescue and water stations. I can’t think of a single complaint (unless I moan about my own performance – should have tried a bit harder, run a bit faster, but, then again, it was hot – I’ve got the sunburn to prove it – and I just don’t think you should rush through scenery like that). All in all it was fantastic. Whatever happens with the fundraising – and I’ve raised around £1,000 myself now for the Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity, so that makes £2k as William Hill have pledged to match whatever I raise – I’m going back there next year. I might even try and run all the way up Axe Edge next time. I reckon I could do it, now I know just how long the agony is going to endure... But I’ll have to wait until next year to find that out.

In the meantime, next week I’ve got the Golden Gate 10k. (No, sadly not a jolly to San Francisco...) It’s at Chatsworth – and I think it’s called the Golden Gate because it must start somewhere around the Golden Gate entrance to the Chatsworth estate. Now, under normal circumstances you don’t get to go in that way – it’s for the Duke of Devonshire’s family only - but next Sunday, the athletes (yes, ATHLETES – that’s me!) get to go in the posh entrance. I’m quite excited about that aspect of it all on its own – yes, just driving through those gates (normally locked against your common everyday visitor – that’s the likes of me again) makes it into a bit of an event. I don’t know what the run will be like, but again, the scenery at Chatsworth is stunning. I don’t know if it will come up to that view of the Dragon’s Back as I came down the hill at Buxton today, but really today’s race was just in a league of its own.

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).

I wanna be on TV....

Not really. I just thought I’d use the title from the Green Day song for two reasons:

The first is, I almost was on TV... well, I could have been. Well, I did the Great Edinburgh Run and that was on TV. Sadly, 10,000 other runners were also doing the Great Edinburgh Run at the same time and they only featured the really outstanding runners, i.e. the ones who had a chance of winning (not me) or the ones dressed as daleks, storm troopers, Princess Leia, bananas or giant leprechauns (definitely not me).

One of my friends from the telebetting centre told me that she stepped outside to watch the Sheffield Half Marathon Runners going past last week (we ran right past where I work). Well, she said she went outside to watch the runners, but she probably just nipped out for a crafty smoke... but anyway, she told me that whilst she was smoking her sneaky cigarette she was also looking out for me, “but,” she complained, “I couldn’t see you at all. All the runners looked the same. They all had their hair tied back and they were all wearing running stuff... I wouldn’t have known you.” Well, whilst I was watching the Great Edinburgh Run on television (my husband videoed it for me) I could suddenly see what she was getting at. All the runners did look the same (with the obvious exceptions of the daleks and the bloke dressed up as Princess Leia) – I wouldn’t have recognised me. (In fact, I did, at one point, think I had recognised myself, but it turned out to be a man wearing a very similar t-shirt – worrying).

Onto the second reason for the title of this being the same as the Green Day song – I got tickets to see Green Day!! Yes! I am so excited (despite the fact that the event itself isn’t taking place until October). In fact, coincidentally, the concert itself is actually taking place the day after my very last run for the Weston 100 – and what a great way to celebrate – to leave the kids with my parents and go out for the night and watch my very favourite band. The fact that I’ve got the tickets at all is something of a miracle because I came back from the Great Edinburgh Run and found that they had pretty much sold out everywhere. The only ones to be had seemed to be from ticket touting agencies at 2-3 times their original face value price. Much as I love Green Day (and I love Green Day – I can’t think how many Green Day songs playing on my Ipod have seen me through my training runs and around the various courses of the races I have done) I can’t afford to pay £110 for a ticket to go and see them – so I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to be seeing them this time (and being as this is the first time they have toured in the UK for the past four years, I was resigning myself to another four years of Green Day-less-ness). Anyway, then, just by chance (in an attempt to console myself about this miserable turn of fate) I logged onto their website and found that there were some tickets still to be bought, but that they were individual tickets dotted around the arena – none seated together - so I bought two. (Yes, what this means is that my husband, who will be accompanying me – hence leaving the kids with my parents – will not be able to sit with me. In fact, I’m in row M and he’s in row N – but at least we’ll have the mutual experience to talk about after). (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).

Anyway, that’s the reason for the title of this entry. I don’t really want to be on TV. I don’t care about that. In fact, if I’m honest, I’d rather not be. But that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the Great Edinburgh Run. It was an amazing experience to run along with 10,000 other people. I had a fantastic time. Edinburgh is just such a beautiful city that the 6 ½ miles or so went in a flash. The (slightly condescending, I felt) commentator on Channel 5 described the course as “challenging” and went on to make derogatory remarks about how charity runners never train enough. Well, I don’t know who you are, you silly patronising man, but I didn’t find the course “challenging” at all – OK there were some hills (and, OK, I admit, that around the 8k mark the only thing I was conversing with was my own pain) but – BUT I got a personal best on the course (59 mins 23 secs), the atmosphere was amazing and I just really enjoyed the experience (and that’s including the fact that Lastminute.com buggered up my room booking for the previous evening and I had to spend the night in the hotel owner’s private guest room because they’d double-booked the room). This is something that I’ve written to complain about (not because the hotel owner was less than gracious – he wasn’t – he was fantastic and I just felt as if I was imposing upon him dreadfully for the kindness and courtesy I received from himself and his family), but because Lastminute are big enough not to bugger up such things and, with this in view, only a donation to my justgiving site from them will make me feel better on this point.

My next run is even bigger than the Great Edinburgh – it’s the Great Manchester and it features 33,000 runners. It’s being covered on BBC2 this time and if you want to get on TV and are running that race, you do either need to (a) win it; or (b) dress up as a camel or a cyberman or something. I will be wearing my home made Sex Pistols/Blue Peter influenced T-shirt and probably won’t figure at all. I certainly won’t be winning it – I’m in the last wave of starting – again - and by the time I get to cross the start line, the race will already have been won by someone or other (it took me 12 minutes to cross the start line in the Great Edinburgh and that’s 10,000 runners – it’s going to be even longer with 33,000 crossing that line) – but that’s not going to stop me enjoying the experience.