Sadness and hope

Sadly the year started with another death of a friend from Ranelagh.  Mike Rowland was a lovely man who shared my love of cricket and running.  We also had something else in common, race walking: when I wasn't good enough for the 1500m team at school, my long legs were drafted into the 1500m race walking event instead and I promptly won the borough and county titles.  I know, most will say that I still race walk given my lack of knee lift - just being efficient folks - and sometimes I wish I'd kept at it because I'm sure there would have been openings at the highest level.  Trouble was that I never really enjoyed it.  Mike drifted into walking after running cross country.  Having run a couple of London Marathons, he then proceeded to race walk them each year, collecting 26 finishers medals for his troubles and leaving plenty of "runners" in his wake.  His daughter has been granted a late place in this year's London in memory of Mike.  He'll be sadly missed.

Despite only running 13 miles in January, I feel a corner has been turned.  Some long standing issues appear to be getting resolved and although my Achilles problem is still and, frankly, always will be with me, I feel mentally fresh and positive.  I'm enjoying taking the Tuesday evening sessions at Cirencester AC - despite the bitter weather - and got a lot of pleasure from watching the club utterly dominate the Oxford League cross country fixture at Swindon Lawns, a technical testing course full of twists & turns, hills and mud. Our ladies embarrassed the opposition with 1st, 2nd & 4th (Wendy Nicholls, Jo Emery & Jane Wassell) in the three to score event; the men also swept to victory led by Chris Illman and Adrian Williams.

Despite a theoretically dry month in January - I had, after all, to try to fend off impending weight gain as a consequence of aforementioned 13 miles - wine and beers did pass my lips.  There were two birthdays to celebrate on the same day, although I spread them out somewhat.  January 20th was the big day with the joint celebrants being my lovely, long suffering, lady wife Claudie and epic Facebook blogger Paul Barlow.

Claudie and Cathie Cowell enjoying

Cirencester Park in mid-winter

I also had a glass or two with Natalie when in London after she'd given me the grand tour of the ITN studios.  It was quite surreal to see and be introduced to a number of reporters and news readers who are normally faces on the screen but here were just like any other office workers going about their daily jobs.

Onwards & upwards!