Since I started training with Paul Curphey in the winter of 1992, hill repetitions on Belmont Hill have been a regular feature of winter training, although I have not managed to finish a session on there the last couple of winters since exercise induced asthma (or is it just my age?) got hold of me.
But that part of Douglas has always been special to me as my Uncle and Aunt, John and Kathryn Crowe, lived at Belmont House, at the top of Belmont Road, the road that turns off to the right as you climb Belmont Hill.
We always spent our Christmas days there as children with our extended family. John Crowe passed away in April and Kathryn has now rejoined him just 9 weeks after their 61 year old marriage was broken. It was her funeral today.
The picture was taken outside Belmont on Christmas Day in 1969. Kathryn and John are pictured on the right. My parents are at the back of the photo behind my grandmother Amy Crowe. The sole surviving member of the group is Kenyon Crowe on the left next to his late wife Ruby.
I knew my aunt as one of the warmest and most caring people you could ever meet. The Crowe family had many good times together and with Michael, Janice (Corlett) and Ruth (Sutherland) their own families are equally good members of Manx society. Kathryn's long years of entertaining so many friends and family in times of plenty followed the war years when she served as a nurse in Iraq and other places and like all others of her generation could not be sure of living to 33 never mind 93.
One of the reasons I started this blog was to provide a background to why sometimes I cannot maintain the momentum of the previous times on the manxathetics.com website.
Family bereavements are always a time of reflection and inevitably of meeting family and friends that you have not seen for a while. I learnt today just how many of them look here for these sort of features. I am therefore quite happy to write for them as much as the regular visitors to the athletics site. Why not?
Its been another long day with a couple of other important matters to deal with, not least cramming work into a morning session before attending a family meeting in Douglas before the funeral.
And so my day ends thinking less about those exhausting runs up Belmont Hill but thinking back to Christmas Turkey and Top of the Pops on Christmas Day, and to my Auntie Kathryn and her little red Hillman Minx.
Kathryn Crowe with brother-in-law Kenyon during his 80th birthday celebrations in 2002
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