The beginning of this year marked twenty years since I joined Chorley Harriers and started running competitively. Running, and more specifically fell running, wasn't just a change of direction in sporting endeavour at that time, it prompted an overall lifestyle change and one that I had been promoting for some time.
In September 2005 I finally stumbled upon a way out of my career as a chef. Working as a chef became a generally unhealthy way of life, despite my conscious and yet contradictory efforts to stay straight. Long and unsociable hours, some days without proper meals or eating the sort of the stuff I would have liked to. It was generally a time of life spent as a single person working bloody hard but not playing enough - and despite some good times and enjoying many aspects of the culinary craft that remains a passion of sorts to this day - looking back, I became unhappy and the nature of the job created voids outside the working environment that I often filled under the day-dreamy haze of cannabis.
Potential as a runner was evident in my school days, but, foolhardy perhaps, I chose football and continued to choose football until I was nearly 32. I'd packed in eleven-a-side a few years earlier after being on the recieving end of a bad injury which was more like a deliberate offence of actual bodily harm. Eventually I saw the iceberg and put the footy boots away altogether, not before forming an invincible five-a-side team I might add. The teamsheet of Dalton, Young, Sutton, Jones and Darlington was like Chinese five spice. A perfect blend.
Mountains and fells were part of my life growing up, having done more peaks in Cumbria and North Wales than I could ever remember. So no surprise really that I had started to combine a growing love of running with a yearning to return to rugged landscapes. Running on the local fells had become an occasional thing in 2005 and I decided that was really what I wanted to do a lot more of. Joining Chorley Harriers immediately thrust me in to a competitive runner's mindset. Life was about to change forever and for the better.
I've not achieved much, if any, material success in my life but I remain quite proud of myself for stepping out of the whirlpool I was stuck in and ultimately using running as a tool for saving my soul. If I'd carried on cheffing and carried on chonging hashish the last twenty years I'm pretty sure I'd be 52 years old with a real-feel of 72 and looking like absolute shit. (If I was still here at all)
If the kitchen introduced me to some amazing and crazy people over the years, well so too has running. We are all a bit crazy, we go through pain in training to go through even more pain on race day but it's enormously satisfying and sometimes terribly frustrating when injury strikes. But what a ride.
My first race was Winter Hill fell race, eleven miles of West Pennine rough terrain with 2700 feet of climbing on a stinking cold February morning in driving rain. Although hardened up to ten mile road runs on club training nights, I probably hadn't run much more than a relatively easy six miler on the fells and I was naive to think I wasn't going to struggle.
Insufficient kit didn't help, I was cold to the bone and soaked for nearly two and a half hours, slipping all over the place, utterly lost and panicking in the clag at one point, but somehow I finished the course and just about stayed the right side of hypothermia.
A year later I knocked about forty minutes off my time in that race and knew what I was doing. Encouraged by club mates I'd started getting stuck in to races in the Cumbrian fells and was pushing out some training runs in to the teens of miles.
Kentmere Horseshoe was my first Lakeland fell running experience and became both a must-do race and regular training run. I seemed to enjoy the middle distance races most, between six and fourteen miles was enough time to get my engine going, but short enough to be able to maintain strong pace.
I got a couple of 12th places at Kentmere, a 10th at Tebay and a few more top twenty Cumbrian finishes in my time. This sounds past tense, but racing places like this are a thing of the past I feel. I'm older, I'm slower and I'd sooner go round on my own these days without the pressure of other runners around me. That's been the case for five or six years now.
Looking back, I lacked strategy in training at times or an overall goal that I wanted to achieve. I got myself distracted by road racing too and chasing better finishing times for certain distances. Another distraction which became more of an obsession for six or seven years was The Yorkshire Three Peaks Race. At 24 miles, too far for me really, but once again the time-chasing mentality got the better of me. This can be a brutal race in which a preconceived tactical plan of how to run it has to marry with your body's conditioning on the day to get the best out of yourself. Elite runners just go out and race it like I would have raced a course less than half the distance, but for the rest of us, despite months of training and a race plan, there's also reliance on a small element of luck that it all falls in to place on the day.
I never felt I quite fulfilled myself at the Three Peaks. Only by ten minutes or so. I thought I had a 3hr 35mins in me but despite three particular attempts that I remember running quite well, 3hrs 44mins was as good as it got.
I did manage to execute one excellent race over long distance which was at The Tour of Pendle and took a few notable scalps that day to take eighth place. In 2009 I won my first race at Whalley Nab, getting the better of Gary Shaw in an East Lancs race who was no pushover. I say first race won, the only one I did win, but I should have won another a few days later at Worsthorne Moor. In another battle with Mr Shaw, I reeled him in from a couple of hundred yards back on the final climb but then surged again a little too early and just missed out as we dived over the finishing line together.
Leaving Chorley after less than a couple of years, I'd joined Blackburn Harriers which was a club I had started to admire. With respect to Chorley, Blackburn is much more the environment of a proper athletics club. There was more competition inside the club and many more very good runners to look up to. Most of my best performances were in that blue and white vest. Some really good lads to spar with on the track and group up with for long run nights. I was in really good shape in my mid-to late thirties and thought I could make the transition in to my forties without much bother as plenty of lads and lasses I knew continued form in to their fifth decade. But quite literally when I turned forty, niggly injuries started to break up momentum and I simply couldn't train like I had done, to get the results. I kept battling against the tide, but was struggling to maintain the weekly milage and speed sessions provided an even higher risk of tweaking something. Racing as regularly as I had began to fade over the next few years and although not willing to accept it at the time, my fastest days were done.
I was sucked into the Ribble Valley Harriers project for a couple of years in my early to mid-forties and did have a decent year in the controversial black vest, racing much more again in 2017 including a 5K only six seconds shy of the sixteen minute zone that was only half a minute outside a long standing personal best.
I say I've been running twenty years, but not quite continuously, for in 2019 I was sidelined for a whole eighteen months by plantar faciitis. It wasn't like riding a bike when I returned and although able to do some decent mileage again with comfort, there was still a long period before I felt I could run hard without fear of irritating the plantar fascia band again.
I'm back on Blackburn's books now, I can't altogether dismiss the idea of doing races again. Maybe at some point I will feel I can do it for the joy and be able to shut out comparisons of yesteryear, but just now the joy is going out running on my own and competing only with the clock, should I feel like it.
On my day I could run a bit, but I lacked consistency and I think that goes back to that lack of strategy or perhaps being coached by somebody. I can't have regrets though. I've run some amazing races and training routes had a wonderful time doing it. I was probably hard on myself sometimes and should've just soaked up the moment more.
Twenty years on and... well, still going at least. I can get a decent wriggle on when my legs are fresh, but I'm more grateful than ever for just being able to get out there and do it. Here's to another twenty if I can look after myself.