Emancipation

I planned the daylight hours around the Creg-ny-Baa Fell Race today so that I could take photos and videos and feature the race on the manxathletics.com website.

It meant that if I was going to get my training run in around the Marine Drive I could not ignore the alarm clock at 6.20 am, even on a Sunday; it meant that before I could get a shower afterwards I had to prepare the food for Sunday lunch (part of a deal I made a few years ago when my obsessions were destroying our family life that at least I would cook every week on a Sunday).

I had also planned the first hour of darkness today with some precision. The entries for the Scottish Widows Parish Walk were due to close at midnight last night – exactly 165 days after they opened. The publicity from the sponsors and event organisers (a sub- committee of Manx Harriers) has been outstanding this year. I’ve also been writing a blog attached the parishwalk.com website with an increasing number of postings publishing lists of entrants, first timers, fastest times, number of finishers, missing names etc so that I would have certainty that when entries closed last night the integrity of the data had been well tested and I could publish and share my statistics and put an end to the exercise that had been increasingly dominating the non working part of each day.

I have campaigned about the futility of leaving entries to the “last minute”. “What happens if there is a technical problem or with your credit card on the last day?” I blogged on more than one occasion.

And there was a technical problem on the last day and it was decided to keep the entries open for another 24 hours. And everyone had to run around to accommodate the people who waited more than 164 days and 16 hours to enter.

If you describe running 20 miles around the NSC to any non-athlete then it is a long way whether it be 40 or 41 laps. When you are running it that extra one lap (if there is an error in the lap counting) can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

And that was the way I felt about day 166 of entries. I was just not prepared to reschedule my day around catering for the people who should have got their entry in so much sooner.

I decided to have a Parish Walk free day. I have not gone near the list of entries or my database today after weeks of several updates a day. In fact, I went a stage further and decided not to look at my emails – I can’t remember when I last did that.

And nobody will be any worse off for it. But I’m better off for it.