Go on have a guess, Blog!

Look Blog,

    I am sorry but you must understand that I am under a lot of pressure. When I gave you that little teaser about the Midland Women’s League Race a few weeks ago, sillie billie me put the wrong clue under the photo. Whoopsie daisie .… why did it take you so long to spot it and to let me know so I could let you know what the correct clue was? I don’t just make this stuff up without several seconds of fore thought you know. Get sorted man. Get on the ball. Yes I know the last but one photo did not take too long to solve and was easi peasi but there were several other little questions there for you to think about, not just the one. Get sorted man. Get on the ball.

So, come on Blog time to get a grip; time to grasp the nettle by the thorn. And let me jog your memory in another of my little teasers

1

11

21

1112

3112

211213

If I give you many more lines of clues I may as well not bother, just do it myself. I don’t just make this stuff up without several seconds of fore thought you know. You must have done a few sums at school, Blog? So if you did and you paid careful attention in class, then TOUGH, you have wasted your time ‘cos that won’t help you one iota with this number sequence… which is a bit of Greek really? Yet another clue…. it is Pascal without the triangle. There I have given it away. But there’s more, can you believe? A lot more, But you will just have to wait a few more trudges until I can compose myself. Take a pill or something to calm me down.

   I mentioned last time about athletes and the natural or artificial help they may have employed on their road to success. Sort of free gear if you get me? A bit of lateral thinking there Blog? Well, talking of free gear …. I remember when weather suits were just becoming popular in the very early 70s but very few sponsors [shoe companies, kit makers] manufactured them. My wife bought me a red plastic pac-a-mac from M & S in 1970. She trimmed the bottom to make it waist length. It looked slightly ridiculous but it served its purpose well until …. After the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, we spent a couple of weeks camping in the Highlands. Did it rain or did it rain. In no time every item of clothing we possessed was sopping wet, we had to take a day trip to the local beautiful [Thurso?] laundrette. After I had been for my spin and my wife hers, it was the turn for everything else to go into the tumble drier. Everything. Unfortunately that everything included the said red plastic pac-a-mac. The mac bit survived the heat but the buttons didn’t!!! They came out of the tumble drier shrivelled. And the smell. We left the laundrette at a fair wick. The upshot was that I was the only international athlete that warmed up for completion in a European Games wearing a cheapo red plastic mac with shrivelled buttons. I kid you not Blog. Ask my old mate, Justine Tyme who reported on the event. All the other internationals seem to be sporting their posh new weather suits … but not me!!! They had zips. I had red shrivelled buttons. And on the back I had printed ‘RUN for FUN’, something I was quite proud of. The sentiment predates the jogging boom by a decade. I had the same logo in luminous reflective lettering on the windscreen of my minivan. And along the sill of the said van I had kaleidoscope flowers growing … I kid you not Blog. Would I lie to you?

Life is funny sometimes. Try and get a late entry into one of these johnnie come lately road races wallaroos. Not a chance, especially the city road races. Sign up two months before hand please. Many quids please for a bag of rubbish. And bugger off when you have finish because we don’t care. Do me a favour, Blog.  But when a genuine mistake is made with a local county cross country entry, the county officials could not be more kind and helpful. But that is the difference between a letsmakefastbuck organiser and a set of athletic club officials who are in the sport to serve the athletes. I have told you about my marathon entry experience before, haven’t I Blog, when I ended up running a full marathon as a guest. Now sometimes I just cannot believe how stupid I can be. Eons ago when I attended the Pink Panther University, I used to enter handicap races each summer, as did every other local athlete. A Handicap race Blog, is a race, usually around a track, but it could have been over the country but rarely on the road, where everyone starts at the same time from a different position. The handicapper has an entry form with details of your recent performances; from which he determines your ‘mark’ or your starting position. The idea is that everyone comes charging down the home straight abreast leading to an exciting spectacular finish for the paying punters ….. But lots more about that later. The point at the moment, being that I was a regular yearly entrant for the handicap races at Richmond Castle in Yorkshire which was  within hitching distance of my abode, even on a Bank Holiday Monday, the date the event was held. I turned up one year to be told that my entry had not been received and I was therefore not permitted to run. Having suffered this attitude before, I had learned to keep my Postal Order stubs, which I duly produced (the Post Office rubber stamped the order and stub with Office details and date). But to no avail. So I spent a hot sunny June Bank Holiday Monday basking in the sunshine by the river below the castle ramparts before hitching all the way back up the A1 road for my supper! The following day, I checked the race advertisement in the ‘Athletics Weekly’ to confirm the address etc.. OK so I was under stress at the time. I was doing my final session of sums at the time. The sums were a bit hard at the time. I was doubly tired and stressed from too much running and too much summing. I was run down and summed up. What a silly billie I was. Can you believe Blog or can you believe what I had done? I had copied the address down from the advert on the back page of ‘Athletics Weekly’ quite correctly, but the advert was for the handicap meeting at Richmond in Surrey!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not Richmond in Yorkshire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wrong County! How was someone as highly intelligent as what I was, expected to know that there was two handicap meetings in two different Richmonds on the same day two hundred miles apart. I should have realised from the sums I was doing at the Pink Panther University that the chances of that happening was about as probable as being able to travel faster than the speed of light. Which we all know is totally impossible, don’t we Albert?

                                     Colin

PS I am going to try some more of these button things on my lap toppie Blog. Isn’t it great????