Young John Not Hindered By Tired Old Legs

Despite currently averaging 60 miles a week, and despite his seven year age handicap, Young John still took the best part of three minutes out of me in clocking 46:52 at yesterday's Garstang 10k, and picking up the 1st over 65 prize.

In my defence:

1. John hadn't done the round trip to Darwen Tower the day before (but he had raced a cross country on Saturday and done an eight mile training run on the morning of the race!).

2. John's time had deteriorated by a couple of minutes since we last met at Garstang, but mine was virtually the same.

4. I missed the start (again) (but only by a few seconds).

3. He always beats me on 10k's.

Despite this sound but routine thrashing, I was not too unhappy with my time of 49:35. I'm at my heaviest ever and thought that this was likely to the time I finally went over 50 minutes, but delayed that ignominy for another day..

For the record, the race was won by Ewen Malloch of Woodford Green in 32:04, Russell Maddams of Horwich was fifth in 33:45, 50 year old Paul Muller was seventh and beat all the other vets in 34:15 and Mark Lysycia (V45) was 92nd in 42:31. First lady was Maria Lowe of Salford in 16th place overall in a time of 36:11.

On the weight front, I am not being helped by people. Only last Thursday, Louise, our neighbour brought round two pounds of biscuits by way of an apology for her shed roof having blown into our garden and broken a few plant pots, and on the same evening the Galloping Major handed over six pint bottles of premium beer as thanks or me having run my eye over some accounts for him. Woe is me (all of me).

EtU (In a couple of months time you'll be asking if the "U" stands for "undernourished")