Bad trip men

We attended Jock Waddington's surprise 50th birthday party at the Ascot Hotel on Saturday night. Jock is the four time winner of the Manx Telecom Parish Walk with straight wins on the 85 mile course between 2008 and 201.

Jock thought that he was attending a fancy dress party for one of his wife's, Teri, work colleagues and so he was suitably dressed for the 60s theme.

I'm given to understand that the sixties was a period of much drug abuse and the fancy dress of some of the attendees was representative of the people who may well have carried out such illegal activities.

I wonder if they these two evil looking guys had any bad trips?

In drug users' jargon, an adverse effect of drug use, consisting of any mixture of the following: feelings of losing control, distortions of body image, bizarre and frightening hallucinations, fears of insanity or death, despair, suicidal thoughts, and strong negative affect. 

I've spent the day researching their past to ensure that I have not been in any bad company and my conclusions are a little surprising.

They are actually responsible for the best trips on the Isle of Man. Michael George and Dave Mackey, whose families run the Welbeck Hotel and the Ascot Hotel are ranked as number 1 & 2 on Trip Advisor.

Read about all the highs they been having.

I've got your number (and email address)

I lost my mobile phone on the day of the third round of the cross country league at Peel.

Not many people, these days, could last without a mobile for a few hours never mind a few weeks. My son, Ben, suggested that I didn't replace it before Christmas - in other words he was going to give me one for Christmas.

Sure enough my first smartphone, made by Chinese giants Huawei, arrived on Christmas day. Although I was grateful, I was still mastering the Microsoft Surface tablet which the same benefactor had given me jointly with Marie for my last birthday and so I didn't take the time to learn how to use it. In fact I barely sent or received a call in the first six weeks.

At last it has come to the top of my list of things to do in what spare time I have had. In the fast few days I have been merging my Outlook contacts, with Googlemail, Skype, Christmas card lists and unsorted email contacts to create a very big contact list,  about 600 people at the moment, which I have been synchronising between my phone, Google and Outlook.

I am hopeless using screens on phones and I really like this application http://mightytext.net/ - if you are near a PC or tablet you control your phone.

And with all sorts of radio, video, email and other apps on my phone I'll have to give up publishing websites to find time to use them all!

Listening to myself

The other day I had the embarrassment of being caught talking to myself. I was on my own in the office just before going home and popped to the loo. I came out muttering to myself only to find that one of my colleagues had come back into the office.

I hope I don't talk to myself too much; maybe less than I listen to myself. I usually contradict my own advice to others and I would certainly not advise anyone to race after six days of not training due to illness. That was my position this week. I only needed to jog around to win the prize for the best over 55 year old in the Microgaming Cross Country league but I thought better of it.

So I snapped away more than 600 times and for the first time I had four video cameras in action. As usual, I messed up a part of the plan as I had zoomed in far too much on the camera by the swamp at the bottom of the field where the races start and finish.

Not competing, made it much easier to take Robbie with me today and he thoroughly getting himself muddy. At least one more day off training which gives me time to take the bus to work in the morning and to drive Ben's car back in the evening. He and Jenny have flown off for a well deserved short break after a very intense few months at work but will be returning with a rather unusual motor vehicle.

Going backwards

I'm still not quite sure why I started to compile another event database at the weekend. I guess it was the frustration and interest generated by finding that the website listing the winners of the Isle of Man Marathon had an error in the very first year. It was the uncertainty of past data that first motivated me to start compiling such list and it was a case of "here we go again".

The most recent years were a lot easier to put together as they were available on the www.manxtimingsolutions.com site and with some of the skills I have learned I was able to manipulate the data to the format I required. After all these years though I am still far from an expert with pivot tables in Excel.

I'm going to work my way backwards through the year. I have gone back to 1995 and have the 1993 and 1994 results from newspaper cuttings on my desk.

I went back ever further on Saturday night. We went to watch the Douglas Choral Union's production of Tommy. We enjoyed it so much that we went back the following evening.

It was 1969 that the "Rock Opera" Tommy was released and 2011 when the Who's lead vocalist Roger Daltrey performed the music at the Villa Marina. I managed to get a photo with Simon Townshend, brother of Pete who wrote Tommy, who was in Roger's band, in the Villa gardens.

But I've also gone backwards in other ways by ignoring the signs of a cold this weekend and carrying on running. There is no way I can run today and not looking forward to going away on a business trip tomorrow - just going back.

There must have been two

Peter Vanderpump first entered the Parish Walk in 1998 and retired at Rushen Church will little fuss.

Today Rushen Church became his final resting place at the age of just 65. There was an enormous congregation and everyone who knew him thought he was a man and a half.

In fact I often thought there must have been two of him as he seemed to appear in so many places. He served on the committee of the Isle of Man Society of Chartered Accountants when my wife, Marie, worked for them and so when he was elected chairman he became her boss. I used to hear lots of good things said about him.

When I joined Mann & Partners in 1997 I heard his name spoken for one of my colleagues served on the board of governors at King Williams College, as did Peter. When he lined up alongside Paul Beckett (above) in the Parish Walk the following year he can be seen in my video.

The following year I joined Nampak International and was allocated a fine office on the 6th floor of what was then Bank of Scotland House and was told: "This used to be Peter Vanderpump's office." Touche Ross (later Deloitte and Touche and then Deloitte) had occupied the offices before Nampak who used Peter's firm extensively and so I would see Peter from time to time.

I joined Caymanx in 2001 and you can guess who the auditors were at the time. And a friend and former colleague at Coopers & Lybrand was his PA. 2001 was the second year he entered the Parish Walk and this time he reached Peel.

And then there was the London Marathon in 2003 when he went to watch his son and daughter, William and Katharine, raising funds for the Lung Cancer (Isle of Man) fund.

I was privileged to attend his retirement party at the Villa Marina Promenade Suite at the end of the year and I recall that he intended to spend more time working for charitable causes which I believe he did as well as with his family (his wife Julia is one of the few people to walk to St Johns in the Parish Walk when it was diverted in 1994 by kart racing in Peel).

I remember meeting him at London City Airport on at least one other London Marathon and he walked to Peel in the Parish Walk again in both 2004 and 2005. I've been searching on and off throughout the week but I can't find any photos.

I only know a little about Peter's life, and I didn't attend the funeral, but I do know that many people in Manx athletics have benefited from his contribution to the community without being aware. For many a time he would marshal at the Great South Run with members of the Rushen Round Table in all sorts of wet and windy weather.

And the reason why I have fond memories of him is that even if I hadn't seen him for a couple of years he would call out my name if you saw him with his marshal's bib in Port Erin - unless it was the other person who looked like him, because its hard to believe that one person could turn up in so many places.

Routine week

Last week was very much a week of routine. Run in the morning, work, visit mother-in-law in nursing home, work on updating databases for www.manxathletics.com website whilst continuing healthy eating.

Then came Saturday on the fells taking photos and a late night at neighbour and former work colleague, Vic Kewley's 70th birthday party and all the routine fell apart. Starting this week with stiff legs and heavy stomach and too many pork pies and too much food generally and a lack of sleep.

Plan to get back to the databases tonight.

Syd Quirk Half Marathon Run	Fastest	Fastest women	By year	By name
Syd Quirk Half Marathon Walk	Fastest	Fastest women	By year	By name
Peel to Douglas Run	Fastest	Fastest women	By year	By name
Peel to Douglas Walk	Fastest	Fastest women	By year	By name
Heritage Trail	Fastest	Fastest women	By year	By name
Northern 10 Miles	Fastest	Fastest women	By year	By name
Isle of Man 20 Miles	Fastest	Fastest women	By year	By name
TT40	Fastest		By year	By name
Winter Hill League	Number of finishes		By year	By name

The first time that Boundary Harriers held a run on the day of their invitation walk - 1983

1983 – Manx Airlines 10km Run

Bernie Plain, who finished 4^th in the 1974 European Championship Marathon, paid his first visit to the Isle of Man and vowed it wouldn’t be his last. It was largely his idea to promote a world record attempt the following year on the (then 880 yard) perimeter roadway of the King George V Park (National Sports Centre from 1991). It was to be his only visit however as the following year, his first as a veteran, he was injured and unable to compete.

Still hoarse from shouting at his friend Steve Barry during the earlier record breaking 20km, he ran steadily for the first mile before dropping the local opposition leaving the Isle of Man’s 1978 Commonwealth Games marathon runner Dave Newton a minute behind. Chris Quine in third place ran within a second of the time he was to run nearly 20 years later!

Position	Christian Name	Surname	Time	Club / Country
1	Bernie	Plain	00:31:19	Cardiff
2	Dave	Newton	00:32:19	Manx AC
3	Chris	Quine	00:33:00	Manx AC
4	Paul	Clarke	00:33:49	Manx AC
5	Phil	Cain	00:34:50	Boundary Harriers
6	Steve	Parkinson	00:35:11	Boundary Harriers
7	Ian	Callister	00:35:27	Manx AC
8	John	Comaish	00:35:33	Southern AC
9	Colin	Halsall	00:35:46	Manx AC
10	Richie	Stephenson	00:36:42	Boundary Harriers
11	Tony	Rowley	00:36:54	Manx AC
12	John	Wilkinson	00:37:01	Boundary Harriers
13	Doug	Corkill	00:37:33	Boundary Harriers
14	Tony	Conway	00:37:59	Boundary Harriers
15	Norman	Neilson	00:39:00	Manx AC
16	Alan	Pilling	00:40:05	Manx AC
17	Ann	Kelly	00:53:18	Boundary Harriers