Bolton Half Marathon

So the weekend before last I ran the Bolton Community Half Marathon. I ran with these two lovely people. I’ve known the bloke in the blue since I was 7 and the girl since I was 4 years old and I was at primary school with them both. The route passed by our old school which was lovely. 

Having lived in this town since the dawn of time itself it’s unsurprising that the route led me past lots of points that held some memory or other for me. 

I passed the house I lived in when I was 22 where my loony ex  threw all my clothes out of the window into the front garden on Boxing day morning following a row about the laundry basket. 

I ran past the duck pond where I used to feed the ducks with my Grandad when I was about six. 

I ran past the pub where I went when I got my exam results at the age of 16. I drank five pints and was sick on the top deck of the bus going home. Charming. 

I ran past the bookshop I used to work in. That was where I ended up selling a book entitled ‘Your Erogenous Zones’ to a customer who was ordering over the phone and who spoke somewhat indistinctly- they actually wanted a ‘Rogets Thesaurus’. 

I ran past my Mum. She was jolly excited by the whole event. One of her friends passed me a mint imperial which kept me going. 

So there you go. I didn’t run a pb but I was 20 mins quicker than last year. The course was ridiculously hilly which you’d think I’d have known considering I know the area so well but somehow I hadn’t thought about the undulations much. My knees are still a little achy. 

Winter Hill

So life got in the way of my blogging recently and I’ve been absent from here for a week or two. I’m currently trying to catch up with everyone’s adventures in the blogiverse. I have at least still been managing to run consistently with my  weekly total distance getting up to the 40 km mark. Yesterday, with a half, and a full marathon on the imminent horizon, I decided that I was due a long run so I headed out from home to the top of Winter Hill and back. For a while now I’ve been tired of running in my local town with all its associated traffic, dirt and noise and I’ve been looking hill-wards to escape. 

It’s about 10km of steep climbing and 400m gain from home to get me to the moors. I suppose I’ve always had the option of hopping into the car and heading up here but I like the simplicity of door to door running- being able to run from my home and back. It’s taken me seven months to get to the point where I can actually run to somewhere pleasant!

Winter Hill itself holds a prominent position above the town of Horwich in Lancashire. It has an absolutely huge TV mast at its summit that broadcasts across the region. You can see the mast for (literally) miles around. It’s been there all my life and it’s the first thing I look for when I’m returning from any long journey to let me know I’m home. You can often see it clearly as you fly in or out of Manchester airport. 

Despite it being a holiday weekend there were very few people out and about. The moor can be quite bleak and lonely. Close to the mast is the site of an air accident from the 1950s when a plane travelling from the Isle of Mann crashed in fog and about 30 people were killed. Some people find it somewhat desolate up there but I like the peace. 

Total distance 27.5km. 

Awesome surroundings. Useless running.

You’d think that having a change from my normal running environment  (which consists of  a dirty, traffic-filled post-industrial nightmarescape) would benefit my running. I mean look at this! It’s a Roman temple and it’s in (suspiciously) amazing condition. But even surroundings like this couldn’t get me going today and my legs truly dragged like a seal’s arse. 

The park has reopened.

The risk of being killed by an angry French tree has passed apparently so the park was open. I ran to this Roman tower which used to form part of a defensive wall. It’s a lookout tower so it’s on top of a hill which made my knees groan ominously as I plodded up it. 

It used to take me about half a day to get up here when I looked like a man smuggling a giant wok under his t-shirt so it was satisfying to get up here relatively quickly and unscathed. 

I also spotted this. It’s more of a grotty grotto than a cave. Does it count? The only thing I noticed in there was a lingering smell of man wee. 

Gladiator training.

This seemed as good a place as any to run this morning seeing as it’s original purpose was as a place where one might go to watch assorted feats of physical endurance. I did three laps then I gave up. I saw no lions. 

Nîmes morning run.

So I kept my promise and headed out whilst it was quiet and cool. I ran to the park. I know there’s a Roman tower on the hill there which I thought I’d incorporate into a run. Also, having been here in the past, when I was fat and unfit, I wanted to compare running up the hill now with how I’d struggled up the hill back then. However it was not to be. The park was shut and the notice on the gate said ‘risque de chutes des branches’ which even I can work out is something to do with trees. Apparently it’s a risk of falling branches (which to be fair I’d happily take my chances with but who am I to argue with local wisdom?)

So I headed into town which was just waking up. There was only me and the gangs of street cleaners polishing up the shiny pavements- my trainers make a rather pleasing squeak on this surface although I could see it would drive you nuts on a long run. It was good to be away from the hordes of visitors that throng through the narrow streets during the day.

I will run tomorrow I promise.

So I’m on my hols in Nimes in France which is jolly lovely. I was supposed to run today but the guy whose apartment we’re staying in told me that the local park had been closed to the public due to dry weather and the risk of fires. It seemed as good a reason as any not to run (and the weather has been truly furnace-like) so I’ll run early tomorrow and if the park is shut then I’ll plod round the town. It’s pedestrianised anyway so it should be fine. The apartment is somewhat unusual. The guy likes his art. The town is charming. 

I’m used to the British ‘summer’ but this is a joke.

I do like a good moan about things. All the standard stuff- other people’s driving, useless politicians, nextdoor’s yapping rodent-like dog that looks not unlike its female owner, the traffic, the alarming rise in the price of a packet of fish-fingers since Brexit etc etc etc. 

But I am usually distinctly different from pretty much everyone I know in that I don’t moan about the weather. Everyone moans about it which is strange because (in the North of England at least) it is always crap. And when the sun does eventually appear for its two days a year we aren’t used to it so we moan that we’re too hot. All in all it’s a bit like moaning that grass is green . 

However even I am a bit fed up with the past week’s incessant gloominess. It doesn’t stop me from running at all.  In fact I quite like running in the rain. But it’s just so dark out there. It’s post-apocalyptic dark and I am almost considering  running in the middle of the day with a headlamp as the quality of the light is that awful. This is the time of the year when I should be getting some light on my skin and fortifying my mood-recharging ready for the true gloom of winter. I’ve had to have the lights on in the house all day for the last three days just to be able to read. Eating extra carrots hasn’t been enough. 

Anyhow.  I’m off out for my run. If I’m not back within the hour then send out a search party…with torches.

The picture is from my kitchen window.

A rest day.

In the push towards my first marathon in October I got plenty of miles done this week with assorted runs- the longest of which was 24km. None of the running was particularly scenic and the long run (alongside the busy A6 road -because it’s flat) was actually horrible. The highlight of  the run was when some strange tatooed and bearded guy stood in his front garden with no shirt on, winked at me as I passed and said, ‘It’s too hot for all this. We should be lying down somewhere.’ 
I’m not sure what he was getting at but it made me run a bit quicker. Anyway, have a look at these pictures from my active rest day which was a quick walk to stretch my legs around the terraced gardens in Rivington. They’re a bit easier on the eye than photos of traffic, litter and strange men. 

Rivington Terraced Gardens (known locally as ‘The Chinese Gardens’ were built between 1900 and 1925 by the local industrialist Lord Leverhulme (founder of Lever Brothers which eventually became Unilever). Lever made an inordinate amount of money manufacturing soap. He purchased a steeply-sloped patch of moorland above the town of Bolton and set about creating his own ornate Japanese and Italian style landscape- as you do. 

Leverhulme died in 1925 and another local business magnate bought the park. After World War II the gardens were opened to the public but left to be swallowed by nature and eventually covered in woodland.  

Today it’s a great place to walk or run although there are hundreds of steps and it’s pretty steep. It feels like the lungs of the town – an easily accessible wild space in an otherwise over-crowded, post-industrial landscape. 

This is currently somewhere that I drive to -but as my longer runs get longer this area is somewhere I could run to from home. I’m not sure whether I’m ready yet for the combined challenge of the run out to here and getting to the top!

Although the views at the top make all the climbing worth it. 

And then it’s just a short climb to the beacon on Rivington Pike and even better views. 

So it looks like I’d better invest in some trail trainers as I head to the hills. 

Do I look like I’m playing Pokemon!?

I stopped to take this photo today. I like how our lovely local council have helpfully added a ‘pedestrians’ sign with a handy little arrow. Gosh if that sign wasn’t there pointing me in the right direction I might have scaled that orange fence and crawled through that trench. Anyway…

Whilst I was taking the photo a passing car slowed down and some guy shouted from the passenger seat,’Aren’t you a bit old for that!’

I was a bit confused at first as I’m not aware of any age limit regarding taking photographs of road works until I realised that he probably mistook my use of the phone for Pokemon hunting. 

Either that or he was commenting on my lycra shorts.