30th time was the most emotional

I never beat Chris Maddocks in a walking race, but I beat him to the alter by more than 25 years! He marries Fi on 12 September. They are pictured above on Friday afternoon at one of my favourite spots on the Isle of Man - Gob y Deigan. The following afternoon he played a big part in making the day special for me.


Saturday was the 30th year in a row that I had been a part of what is now the Manx Harriers HSBC Securities Services Open Meeting (not the 29th as I first wrote). It was probably the most emotional.

I’ve seen the event grow from a walking only event where the best walker in Britain the previous year was invited to attend the Boundary Harriers dinner and also to take part in an invitation event with local walkers. Manx Airlines first sponsored it in 1983 and the following year there was an attempt on the World 40 mile record – as Dougie Corkill reminded me on Saturday, it was 25 years to the day since that memorable race.

I’ve seen several British walking records, the fastest ever half marathon run on the Isle of Man and more recently many fine performances by the Irish walkers.

I took part as a walker on four occasions and have now run in it thirteen times. I’ve even won a walk and a run, although my walking win was of a somewhat higher standard as sadly the standard of the run has fallen somewhat from its peak. It’s also sad to see how few British walkers made the trip here this year.

It is brilliantly organised each year by Bridget Kaneen and her team of helpers. It is equally pleasing to see the work that goes into planning the event over many months and the efforts of other (non competing athletes) athletes on the day to lend a hand to support their fellow athletes.

The event has been one of the major features on the http://www.manxathletics.com/ website since 2001 even though Paul Jackson took over prime responsibility for it in 2005 after he set up the http://www.manxharriers.com/ site that winter. For the past couple of years I have produced videos of the event to add to the stats and the photos but I had an advantage compared to this year – I wasn’t taking part!

So I had to curtail my coverage a little this year as I had entered the half marathon. Even so I was delighted to receive such a positive response from visitors to the site in Ireland.

Our younger son, Ben, came from university to run and improved his time by 7 minutes whilst I was happy with my time, albeit it was the slowest time that I have run on the course.

10% of the entries in the half marathon were from our family and it was our elder son Robbie who caused the emotion. Robbie’s life has brought many challenges but running is a great outlet for him. This was his first half marathon and breaking 2 hours was his target. He went much too fast early on and suffered accordingly in the later stages. I was very worried about his condition and questioned my own judgment and responsibility for encouraging him to take part. I thought that he was about to collapse and suggested he stopped.

I’ve written a lot about Chris Maddocks on this site in recent weeks but it was this five times Olympic Walker who gave Robbie the most encouragement during his final laps, particularly when he was reduced to walking. With 300 metres to go Chris shouted to me that Robbie was running again and I called out to Robbie the number of seconds left to break 2 hours. With the fastest finish of any of the runners he beat his target by five seconds.

There is always the risk of overdoing things in sport. I had never gone so quickly from the fear that we had allowed Robbie to overdo it to the joy of seeing an ambition achieved. I still don’t think that there is any other sport where people appreciate each other’s performances as they do in athletics.

I’m hoping that there will be additional contributions towards the coverage of the event yet but it would be impossible for me to convey the emotion that it brought to me this year.