2 Sept 1990 – a Sunday morning. I was at Belgrave Hall
getting changed ready to run my first half marathon, the Wimbledon. I’d been
running for a year and a half now and I’d improved some, my 5k pb had gone from
18:12 to 15:57, but I’d never run as far as a half marathon, not even in
training. There was only one reason I’d entered, my girlfriend’s brother was
running it and their parents were coming to watch him. Having tried hard to
gain their respect for four years here was an opportunity to turn things around
in one race. As I got changed there was the usual clubroom banter going on, between
guys doing the half and other guys just there for their usual Sunday run.
Amid the banter one old guy came up to me and introduced
himself as Charlie Dickinson. I’d never heard of Charlie, not surprising as
he’d been travelling around the world since I’d joined Belgrave, but now he was
back and about to show the Masters (or Veterans in those days) scene what he
could do. But the one thing that stood out about Charlie was that he was full
of advice, whether you wanted it or not. I was just trying to relax, enjoy
myself and beat my girlfriend’s brother but Charlie kept on giving me snippets
of advice I wasn’t really interested in, afterall my dad was old and I’d never
listened to him, why should I listen to an old man I didn’t know. I told him I
thought I could run 1:20 and he told me I should stay behind Fred as he was
definitely going to run 1:20.
With Charlie’s advice firmly in my head I began the race,
headed off without Fred and finished in 1:18.50. The last three miles had been
hard work and I was knackered. I’d beaten my girlfriend’s brother by about 25
minutes, had I gained any parental respect, probably not as I suffered post
race flatulence for the rest of the day and fell asleep mid afternoon. However
I had gained a begrudging respect for Charlie, who didn’t abandon me, like I
abandoned his race plan, and kept popping up at various places on the course to
cheer me on. A year later I started training with Charlie, under the guidance
of Arthur Bruce, by now I was a more willing recipient of his advice and we
became great friends, how could you not with someone who runs his 5000m pb
(15:14) at age 44.
As I improved I started dishing out advice in Charlie
fashion, but after a while I realised that people didn’t want to be told what
to do all the time, so I stopped. Of course I was happy to dish out advice but
now I waited until I was asked. I generally follow that path still, though
recently I can be accused of giving one of my Salford colleagues some advice he
wasn’t asking for, his response reminded me of this tale.
But I often do give advice to people when they ask,
naturally you can get advice from many different sources and often those
sources will offer differing advice. That’s natural and it’s up to you to
understand the advice and choose whichever course you feel is best for you. I
did get annoyed with one client who I gave advice to, they then went to get
advice off other sources and spent days questioning why my advice was different
to theirs, but that’s another story.
Someone else I took advice from, when I was a beginner
runner, was Belgrave’s John Mather, John’s recently opened up a group on
Facebook ‘I was, or am a runner!’ There are some great pictures and cuttings
being uploaded into the group, from many of Britain’s finest athletes of the
past, some still going, worth a look if you can get it.
Moving onto more current times: it’s almost two weeks since
I underwent a series of running firsts, it’s amazing how many there are
available to me, despite all my years in running. The event was the Northern 12
Stage Road Relay, held at Heaton Park. It was the first time I’d taken part in
the Northern event, having been a regular at the Southern event with Belgrave
and Herne Hill previously. It was the first time I’d been in a 12 stage B team,
when I previously hadn’t been good enough for the A team there was no B team
entered, mind you on this particular occasion I’d have been happy to be in the
C team. I also thought this was the first time I’d been the slowest short stage
in the team during a 12 Stage, but on closer examination I realised I was the
slowest in Belgrave’s National 12 Stage team that took Silver in 2004, though
on that occasion I was still able to hold my head up with 3rd
fastest on the leg, the two guys faster than me, marginally, were from the two
teams I was chasing (we were lying in 3rd when I took over, and when
I handed over), Kevin Quinn of AFD and Duncan Mason of Salford, Kevin I’ve
known for many years, we trained together for a while, Duncan, I met for the
first time proper at the Northern 12 Stage. Needless to say, on this occasion,
I didn’t set the Salford tent alight with a scintillating time, but I did ok,
most importantly I came through without making my injury any worse, though I
did run into a rock on my warm up and suffered a painful bruised knee for about
a week. Salford’s A team were always in the hunt and were just shy of the
medals, coming 4th. The B team were always up there challenging for
a National qualification and were well placed with two legs to go, but then we
went a man down, a disappointing end to a great day, but not one to dwell on.
 |
| Anyone know where leg 11 is? |
 |
| 2010 in the Herne Hill A Team, having a good run sweeping past the Belgrave athlete as I approached the Belgrave supporters, can't remember receiving any cheers for old time's sake! |
After the race I went to Spain for a few days, a planned
trip to try to sharpen up in the sunshine in anticipation of a National 12
Stage leg. Following our non qualification, my inability to really turn on the
pace and the weather forecast, I was wishing we’d decided to go to the Lake
District instead, for some serious walking. But as it turned out, the weather
in Spain was great, whereas in Britain it was not, and my injury pains started
to subside, thanks at last to all the hard physio related exercises I’ve been
doing, and I was able to start running a bit faster. In fact, despite only
being their four days I was able to train reasonably hard on three of them, the
old Rog is coming back. In fact since I’ve returned from Spain my training has
gone particularly well, I’m moving freely again, virtually without any pain and
with a much improved pace, even on the short sharp reps. Now time to start
planning my next race, I think.
Written by Roger Alsop
No comments:
Post a Comment