50 Up

Saturday brings a momentous occasion that I am sure many were doubting I’d ever reach. In fact no one doubted it more than me. This is the moment of my 50th Parkrun.

I decide I would like to break new ground for the occasion so we head out to Kingsbury Water Park near Sutton Coldfield to do the deed. All goes well and I don’t even celebrate my 50^th by getting injured. The run moves MD on to 46 but I don’t believe they do the t-shirts for dogs.

The afternoon is taken up with a Derby home match while Sunday brings another run as we head up to Clumber Park to do another Trust 10k.

The improvement in my fitness is shown clearly with my time at Clumber of 49:17 compared with 48:31 in June...

(Sunday 26^th August)

Jump Start Required

This morning we get up early and I manage to collar some poor camper still with sleep in his eyes to jump start our car. Once up and running we head to Keswick for the Parkrun. As we pass back into mobile reception it is confirmed that Derby lost 1-0 last night.

At the Parkrun they are also running a GoTri event which is Duathlon incorporating the 5km parkrun, a 13km road cycle ride and a 1km run around nearby Fitz Park.

I did offer to pack L’s bike but she declined, so it’s just the run she’s doing. There’s one other complication, it’s tipping it down. The start is at the former railway station which is now part of a hotel but the platform works well as cover from the rain for us hardy spectators. Who aren’t quite hardy enough to brave the rain.

Afterwards we go for a Full English in Keswick and then take in the Keswick Museum where there is a display on Wainwright.

Then it’s back to the tent for a shower and some chilling in the tent in the rain.

Later, we head down to the Sticklebarn for food and drink. The place is now National Trust owned which I think is a bit like being run by the local council. Consequently it stops serving food at 8pm and closes completely at 9pm despite being over half full. Everyone decamps back to their accommodation or to the other pubs. We head into the New Dungeon Ghyll next door for a night cap.

(Saturday 7^th November)

Officially Falling Apart

After a wet trip up on Friday it’s stayed pretty much dry since. Although we’ve already had enough rain to make parking on the usual fields impossible. So we have to make a £4 donation to the National Trust to use their car park. It should have been more but we’ll take the risk that no one spots we’re going to overrun the two hour limit.

As usual its a 12 noon start for the traditional Great Langdale Christmas Pudding 10k. The new owners of the Sticklebarn - the National Trust, who annoyed us last time by changing the pub so much, now appear to have annoyed the race organisers as well. Consequently the race HQ is now at the adjacent New Dungeon Ghyll Hotel. This also makes for a slightly changed course due to a new start and finish position.

Even then I start too far back, this is of course L’s fault as she told me to take it ‘steady’. So it’s a congested start and the first km takes me 6:35. Which is slightly misleading because the 1 km marker hasn't moved despite the new start beign further down the road. When I finally get my running legs together, I can start getting on with the task of overhauling Spiderman.

Once he’s been despatched I turn my attention to Wonder woman, who isn’t so easily dealt with and hangs like a carrot in front of me for the entire race. That is until near the end where she finds a finishing kick from somewhere. It comes from a place that I haven’t been informed about because I can’t find one and she edges further out of my range. Then just to complete my misery, who should sprint past me but bloody Spiderman. Woe is me.

The last km here is usually way shorter than a km and due to the repositioning of the finish, will be even shorter today. Only the marker doesn’t turn up at all, clearly it is now so close to the finish it’s not worth putting out at all.

My time is not good, 46 minutes something, my slowest Langdale ever, clearly my legs are now officially falling apart. I am handed my Derbyshire Mathew Walker Christmas pudding and a mince pie before heading back to the car to unleash the boys.

The rain holds off but for a shower in the middle of the race followed then by another shower at end after I’ve got changed and I’m wandering around looking for L who has sneaked across the line when I wasn’t looking. To be honest I was probably being pulled towards a wall for a long peeing session at the time.

There’s not the usual post-race crush in the Sticklebarn due to the race not being based there any more but it’s still busier than the New Dungeon Ghyll which simply does not have the room to be busy. The lack of space means they hold the presentation in the tent at the finish which detracts from the atmosphere a touch. We at least do frequent their bar for a swift one.

After which we start making tracks for home via an art gallery. This is not something I make a habit of. I certainly don't make a habit of buying things from art galleries and particularly not expensive things from art galleries. Naturally it has collies on it but clearly it’s not just my legs that are falling apart.

(Sunday 16th December)

Who Stole The Snecklifter?

After being early yesterday and thereby causing me to miss it, the bus is well late this morning. No consistency.

The plan is for L to collect me from work at 5pm and then we’ll head straight up to the Lakes. Where I plan to re-rupture my knee in the Grizedale night race. I’ve packed most of our kit in the car already, so all L needs to remember really is to being the dogs. Luckily even if she tries to forget to pack MD, he's unlikely to let her get away with it.

The M6 is no better for us being that bit earlier but then we didn’t expect it to be; at least it’s no worse.

We roll up at a very busy Great Langdale campsite and pitch up, as usual, in the dark. Then because it’s so busy, we forgo the usual pilgrimage to the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hikers bar and head to the Sticklebarn instead, hoping it will be quieter. It is, much quieter. It’s usually much busier than this in October...

Turns out the Sticklebarn is now owned and run by the National Trust. They took over in June. First impressions aren’t great. There’s a new food menu, which we didn’t try but gone are the hot toddies and the regular local real ales: - Tag Lag, Cumberland and most importantly Snecklifter. No Snecklifter, no wonder it’s quiet. 90% of their beer trade must have been either Cumberland or Snecklifter. True, there’s an impressive array of lagers that no one’s touching and there’s the dreaded Doom Bar from Cornwall... There are other beers too, to be fair, but it’s no wonder everyone else has gone elsewhere. Probably sitting in the ODG emptying the cellar of Old Peculiar.

I think the National Trust are going to have to learn quite quickly that there’s a world of difference between catering for the summer tourists and the winter walkers.

So not a great beer night, at least back in the tent we have the cake that L has baked specially for the trip. She says it’s a disaster but the boys and I love it.

(Friday 26th October)

Spanish Plume

Apparently this weekend will bring high temperatures mixed with thunderstorms and it’s all the fault of the Spanish, and their ‘Spanish Plume’. They’ve sent their warm air over here where its immediately got into an argument with our resident Atlantic cold front and the result going to hot and thundery. So they say. It'll probably hail, during my race.

I start to explain all this ‘Plume’ business to L but she miss understands and starts texting Daughter to tell her to leave off the beef that’s in the refrigerator as it’s probably for my recipe. No... ‘Spanish Plume’ isn’t a recipe.

Oh well, as it happens the weather is fine in Clumber Park for the Trailblazer 10k. For some reason I quite fancied this one and when those nice ‘Survival of the Fittest’ people at Men’s Health sent me a voucher for a fiver off, I was in. If it was a bribe, it didn’t work, there’s no way I’m swimming in the Trent again and doing ‘Survival of the Fittest’ this year.

MD quite fancies it too, I think he’s got the running bug but he can’t join me today. Nor does L, she got bigger fish to fry and it comes a day too early to count in her ‘500 miles in her 50th year’ challenge. Her 49th birthday is tomorrow and she’s starting things off with a bang in the form of a half marathon.

The race start area and events village are in the same place as for the Clumber Duathlon, although the parking was further away but more importantly free of National Trust parking charges.

I register, collect my technical T-shirt and my race number. The technical T-shirt is good, has ‘Trailblazer’ across it but isn’t dated nor race specific, there are three Trailblazer races. Which is a bit of a shame. My race number is 666...



Hmmm, somebody’s having a laugh. It must be an Omen...

Everything is well organised. There’s free post-race massage, wine sampling and they even advertised ‘local’ ales in the beer tent. Unfortunately they fell down on that one. Their ‘local’ beers are Old Trip and Old Speckled Hen which are both brewed in Suffolk and by the brewery that closed down our local one.

I didn’t expect the organisers to get many people in the first ‘red’ wave (for predicted times of less than 40 minutes) involved in the aerobic warm-up ‘preparing their minds and muscles’ and they don’t. I think there were three of them and I think one of them might have been a ringer from the organising team.

There are eight waves in total and I’m in the second one, ‘blue’, which is for those who think they’re good but hadn’t got the bottle to put themselves in to ‘red’. I think there were half a dozen in our aerobic session; I’m not one of them. Don’t want to pull anything before I start.

The race briefing tells us all about the course and then the chap sends us off to ‘blaze those trails’. Who’s he talking to?

The course is well marked, apart from one spot where a marshal seems to have gone AWOL and we nearly follow the ‘spectator route’. There are also kilometre distance markers and two water stations. The trails are narrow, which means the staggered starts were probably a good idea, and sprinkled with bumps, roots and the odd dip. It’s quite undulating which soon saps the energy. For someone who hates off road, I seem to be doing quite a lot of them at the moment.

At first I let a few idiots career off ahead and wait for them to fade, which they do, whilst I stick to a sensible consistent pace. 4:25-ish. Consistently slow but imminently sensible. Then, suddenly, horror of horrors, I’m the idiot careering off in front. Well into second place. My legs tell me it isn’t going to last and it doesn’t. I eventually come in eighth in my wave.

The goody bag was ok with gels, energy bars, drinks and only the one sachet of body lotion, which makes a nice change. Unfortunately the three free magazines (Runners World, Triathletes World and Men’s Health) although a nice touch, are no use to me. One I already subscribe to, one I’ve retired from and the third wants you to swim in the Trent.

In the results, when all the waves are added together, I ended up 35th overall out of 669. Not bad. That’s also quite a good turnout for a first running of a race. Then it starts to rain, the ‘Plume’ has arrived, so we head home.

It’s the final match of the Championship season and Derby bow out with a defeat. Four in a row, good eh? It was heavy going though; they had to work hard for that defeat. They had to give away two penalties and a soft goal before they finally managed it by two goals to one.

Meanwhile Robbie Savage bowed out in ‘style’, in his underwear, as he threw all his kit and his boots into the crowd. Not a pretty sight. Fair play to the Reading crowd who had to put with that and still gave Mr Savage a standing ovation. I imagine that’s the first time in his 631 appearances that he’s got that from the opposition supporters.

A busy day ends with a trip to Birmingham. Its 6pm doors tonight at Academy 2 but there’s no support band. WTF. So it’s a bit of a drag waiting for the main band to come on, to say the least. There are only so many pints of Tuborg you can stomach while you wait e.g. one. Merchandising doesn’t keep us occupied for long. Sadly there’s no tour t-shirt, a special would have been nice because tonight it’s the 30th Anniversary Tour for The Icicle Works.

We were kind of here for the 25th, although the ‘here’ we had to go to was only as far as Nottingham’s Rescue Rooms on that occasion. That was the first time Ian McNabb had toured under the Icicle Works name for 15 years, then after a string of dates in 2006 and 2007 he retired it again. The purists (like me) were a bit miffed that original members Chris Layhe and Chris Sharrock weren’t involved but we had to lump it. Sharrock, to be fair, has been a bit busy and is currently spending his time with one of the Gallaghers in Beady Eye.

The line-up that takes the stage tonight, the last of just four dates celebrating their anniversary, is the same as that 2006 version: - bassist Roy Corkill, keyboard player Richard Naiff and the drumstick twirling ‘Dodgy’ drummer Matthew Priest.

They open with ‘When It All Comes Down’ a single only release from 1985, the extended version. If they're all as long as this, we might be here all night. McNabb confirms that possibility when he announces there’s no curfew tonight, so they can play as long as they like, and I see the colour drain out of my partners face. She prefers her gigs short and punchy, plus she’s got an early start for a half marathon tomorrow. Cheer up, this one’s your favourite, it’s ‘Evangeline’.



A nostalgic trawl through the band’s back catalogue follows: - ‘Little Girl Lost’, ‘Seven Horses’, ‘Rapids’ then what he describes as Scouse country rock ‘Who Do You Want For Your Love?’. Third LP side 1 track 5 he tells us, from a day when albums had sides.

McNabb’s voice still sounds great on all of these and he’s certainly giving it his all. He’s already dripping with sweat, yet he won't give up that army jacket. Which changes colour before our eyes, track by track, getting darker and darker as it gets wetter.

The title track from the fourth album ‘Blind’, the last the original trio recorded, follows with its ‘there's an actor in the White House’ lyric. He probably meant Reagan but he sings it as if it’s still relevant.

‘Melanie Still Hurts’ from ‘Permanent Damage’ recorded after the original line up broke up, is a run through his ex-girlfriends. Julie, Jackie, Carol - check. Sarah, Karen, Michelle - check. Though, he quips that, at only three minutes and forty seconds it only take us up to 1985.



Then there's the heavier 'Shit Creek' which I just don't get and never did. ’Starry Blue Eyed Wonder’ is as good as ever and then, an hour in, if you’re old school you settle in for some indulgence, if you’re not you’re in some trouble. Seven of the next nine tracks come from their self titled debut album. The audience is split, half are ecstatic, the other half are looking at their watches. L is texting furiously and I don’t think it’s a review the Sunday Times is going to print.

We get a convoluted introduction to ‘Reaping The Rich Harvest’ in which McNabb confesses he has no idea what the song is about but assures us it sounds good. This causes confusion amongst the rest of the band, as this is not the next song on the set list. Yet, having given the song such a build up, they have to revise the order



Richard Naiff's piano and keyboard playing was a delight all night, as was his recorder playing on ‘Lover's Day’. Then the dark and brooding ‘What She Did To My Mind’, pretty outstanding despite its four false endings and it’s followed by 'Up Here In The North Of England'. McNabb's view of north/south divide circa 1986. Tonight, he decides that Birmingham is more north than south.

Then after a trio of excellent cuts from that first album, the two hour set is finally ended with 'Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)'



They come out for an encore with McNabb still in the same sodden jacket for a rocking 'Understanding Jane' but he must be feeling the heat because he’s removed his shades. Then they go off again. How quaint. No one splits their encores anymore. How eighties.

They’re soon back again, as is the jacket, for ‘Love Is A Wonderful Colour’ who some x-person off x-factor called Rhydian has just covered and the closing ‘Hollow Horse’.

To be honest it was probably 4 or 5 tracks too long but the ones I would have axed wouldn't have been the ones to go. It was so good to hear old album tracks like ‘As The Dragonfly Flies’ and ‘Factory In The Desert’.

I imagine now its back to Ian McNabb solo shows, at least until the 35th anniversary.

(Saturday 7th May)