Dear Blog,
You can believe it or not, but here is the result of next Saturday’s Warwick University Cross Country Relays held on October 27th 2012. We decided to enter the winning mixed team of two men and two women, a mixture of experience and inexperience; Justin and Andy were the experienced team runners, Anita and Emma had never run before, not so much as a walk in the park. I was acting Team Manager. With a little more experience in that role, I expect to be appointed as the real McCoy next year. We called ourselves God’s Fourth ‘A’ Harriers Team which we thought was rather a clever play on the name Godiva Harriers. You would have thought all these 4 A* ‘A’ level type undergraduates would have got the pun straight away, but none of them seemed to understand. Makes you realise that that nice Mr Cameroon’s Minister of Education, Mr Gore, has a point when he says that more of these undergraduate types should either go to Public School like what he did, or go out and sign on the dole; stop lazing about in Halls of Residence, waiting for three years to pass. So with our mix of athletic background, it meant God’s Fourth ‘A’ Harriers Team was not regarded by the other 34 teams as much of a serious threat, but how wrong could they be; much to their chagrin, we finished close up in 33rd place. Of the 34 teams to start, all but one finished.
So October 27th 2012, saw Anita Fold toe the line for us for the first leg around the University of Warwick’s sport’s field. She got off to a cracking start, jumping straight into the lead by opening up a yawning gap of one yard (one metre to you Blog) in the first three. But then the rest of the field started to peg her back. The rest as they say is history … well actually it isn’t, because the race hasn’t happened yet. She will trail in last.
In no way discouraged, our next runner, Justin Case, grabbed the baton from her and tore off after the distant runners in the full knowledge that he would run well. Tomorrow, he fell down the stairs at home after a drinking session and broke his leg. He will have to go to hospital to have his right leg put in plaster. So, he did a remarkable job in the circumstances, never once complaining about his crutches getting sucked down into the mud. However, the Loughborough ‘D’ team will lodge a complaint about our second stage runner receiving assistance but the race referee will blow his whistle and he kick the Loughborough racers out.
It has to be admitted that our third stage runner, Andy Mann, has a personal hygiene problem. Like every true athlete, after a training session, rather than consign his kit to the wash basket for the laundry, he prefers to hang it out to dry, to be reused, even if damp, over and over and over and over again. Come the time that he is unable to catch his kit, when he chases it around the room before a session, he will admit to having to use a fresh set of shorts and vest, a change might be needed. The downside of Andy’s personal hygiene problems is that he has to train and race by himself. He says he is going to record his experiences in an autobiography called ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’, but I told him that that had already been done and John Le Carre had received a Book Prize for it. Andy has entered next year’s London Marathon. Give him a cheer; he will be easy to spot amongst the 30,000 runners. Although the streets will be packed with competitors, Andy, as usual, will be running in his own little bit of personal space. There will be runners to the left of him, runners to the right of him, runners in front of him, his not to reason why all the world are giving him a wide berth.
So Andy clawed his way back through the field, a quick spurt here a quick spurt there, each time catching a runner, each time, the caught competitor having to give way having suddenly encountered breathing difficulties with a strange smell that pervaded the course. The crowd around the finishing line were going wild when Andy stormed up the home straight for the penultimate time having unbelievably caught up thirty three places to thrust God’s Fourth ‘A’ Harriers Team into an almost unassailable lead. Remember all this is taking place next Saturday so anything is possible. Anything.
Justin Time took off for us on the penultimate stint of 1234 metres. Team talk in the four days before we won, concluded that this leg should be used to lift the I.Q. level of performance of the quartet and show the Warwick University students a thing or two. As Justin has got a ‘D star’ in woodwork in his G.C.S.E., he was the obvious man who was up for the task; especially as he would have got a straight ‘C’ grade had it not been for him chipping too much off the old block of wood from which he was carving a swordfish. His chisel slipped at a most inopportune moment. None of the parents attending his school’s end of term display of pupils work had ever seen a gold fish with a walking stick before. Something of a talking point and part of the reason he was able to successfully land a job in the local fish and chip shop after leaving school. Suffice to say that Justin kept us going in the right direction in the team competition and victory was ours for the taking. The newspaper report had been written and the copy filed, the presses were rolling. Eat your heart out Press Baron, Mr Rupert Bear.
It was left to Emma Dale to run the glory leg for us. Emma, bless her, suffers from Directional Misfunctional Disorder. She tries not to let it show. She is very brave about it. Her home address tattooed on her forehead in no way causes her to be embarrassed. So coupled with never having run before, and her DMD, it was no surprise to her team mates that she set off in the wrong direction, back down the home straight thereby conceding eleven places before we could turn her round and point her onto the correct route. Another four places were lost when she saw her mother in the crowd and went over for a chat. Six more places went down the tubes as she lost valuable time by signing autographs for her mother’s friends. This stoppage clearly disorientated her because she then headed back towards the start, Anita just managing to turn her around before the Vice Chancellor awarded her the winning team trophy. To avoid further embarrassment to our hoists, Anita, Andy, Justin and myself decided we would have to run with her all the way round as we did not want her trotting off into the sunset, not to be found by the police before October 25th thereby missing the start and throwing the whole of this report of our victory into total disbelief. The official has now made a full recovery from the hypothermia which he caught hanging about in the past, waiting for us to finish.
So the result of the Warwick University’s Cross Country Relays to be promoted next Saturday (October 27th 2012) showed that the truth was really stranger than fiction. Up the God’s Fourth ‘A’ Harriers Team of Anita Fold, Andy Mann, Justin case, Emma Dale and acting Team Manager Tom B. Loggone.
Colin
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