Old men stories

My thoughts were on Tim Hutchings this morning whilst I  was struggled to run in the biting, cold wind - and the need to set Sky+ to record the World Cross Country Championships as we were going to our friends' house for lunch.

Now Tim knows a thing or two about World Cross Country Championships having twice finished in the silver medal position in 1984 and 1989. And he wrote a hard hitting article published in the most recent edition of Athletics Weekly in which he slated the current British cross country runners for not racing each other on home soil, or should that be home ice and mud?

I have no idea how hard it is to be an international cross country but at least I could still relate to someone two years younger than me lecturing on the need to continue training when the weather is less than favourable.

One thing I managed to do this weekend, partly because the freezing weather kept me inside most of the time, was to catch up on reading Athletics Weekly. There was an interesting article a few weeks ago about Jim Alder who won the 1966 Commonwealth Games Marathon and finished second in the 1969 European Marathon. If ever there was a man who suffered set backs in his life it was him. His father was killed on the last day of the war and his mother died of TB two years later. Fifty years on and his retail sports business went under and the guarantees he had given to the business cost him his own house. He went back to his trade, bricklaying, and is still running every day aged 72, albeit he admits its more of a jog.

I can relate to the slow down that all athletes suffer sooner or later. Sometimes it seems that all too many "fit athletes" die prematurely. Only tonight I read about former Olympic 200 metres champion Pietro Mennea who died this week aged 60. So it was almost pleasing to read one of the obituaries in Athletics Weekly from a few weeks ago.

75 years ago the International Cross Country Championships (as it was known before it became the World Championships) was won by Jack Emery. According to Athletics Weekly he went to school in  Newcastle-under-Lyme, a place where I lived for two years. I was inferior in every way for whilst I was completing my education at North Staffs Polytechnic he completed his at Oxford or Cambrdge; my running in the Potteries took me to places like Silverdale and Keele, his running took him to an international title.

The reason I am less sad about this obituary was that despite pushing his body hard he lived to be 99 - and he enjoyed a drink and a cigar in his 90s!

I often say that we retain many of the same strengths and weaknesses throughout our lives. Despite so many years suffering from poor circulation, chilblanes and more recently low levels (on one occasion medium levels) of frost bite I did it again yesterday. One of my toes is an bad state today, after five years of running in the mornings in shorts, I actually covered my arms and legs this morning. But I still forgot to set Sky+.