Mid Lancs XC – Lancaster University held under Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) Rules

 

“Stop thinking about what you are going to write and get a move on!” called out an unmistakably Liverpudlian voice, as I slogged up the first lap hill at the Mid Lancs XC, the other week. There is something about that accent, you may agree, for which the word stereotype seems to have been invented and try as I might, I could not avoid a wry grin at its almost onomatopoeic quality, when delivered in a broad Scouse. Try it!

 

In any event, this rebuke from our one time Chairman (for it was he) did rather set me thinking about the inner life of the XC runner. I know I should concentrate Radcliffe-like on the number of paces I take but, at my pace and age the mind inevitably wanders a little. Words and phrases are carried along the current of the stream of consciousness in an endless game of Pooh sticks.

 

Focus was perhaps wanting because I had by this time taken a tumble. I am (by the way) especially grateful to Andrea Smith for her sympathetic remarks bringing me back to some semblance of reality as I trudged onward (and I must briefly apologise if my response at the time did not fully convey the depths of that gratitude but I was cold and very, very wet)… Anyway, I had tumbled and those who had drifted to the back of the pack, Norman Greenwood and my old friend Bateman, John B and Peter G have since said how much they appreciated its balletic grace. Quite the dying swan, I heard someone say. Darcy Bussell herself, they assure me, could not have improved upon it - “splosh, splat” into one of the muddier sections. I am happy to have given them some small pleasure.

 

It was at this point (apart from wondering whether I could honourably give up!) that I was reminded that in a previous report I had pondered whether some much loved rivals might stumble thus and lo, here was I face down in the proverbial. Poetic justice some might say, and it occurred that one or two fellow competitors might experience a certain Schadenfreude at this calamity but I know deep down that you are all too gallant for that.

 

Having got going again, it was not long before I was back at the brook which I had been told definitively at the start had been removed from the course this year (although in truth it made little difference as the whole course was under water to some degree). I found myself mincing towards it – like an elderly parent putting a toe in the sea at Bridport. “Thank Heavens”, I thought – as a flash jerked me back to life – “that Tony Croft isn’t here to get another shot of me looking more camp than Butlins.” (Younger readers should refer to their Mum for explanation at this point.) But with my wrist cocked at that angle (see photos) at least I have somewhere to put my handbag.

 

Safely onto dryish land, and onward toward the thoroughly welcome sight of BWF ladies now washed and laundered and a veritable adornment to the course after their efforts earlier; they offered what passes for encouragement on these occasions.  (I thank particularly whomever it was – possibly young Debbie Cardwell – who abjured me to “get those legs up”. I haven’t heard that one before!)

 

Buoyed up by this sight a little poem was by this time singin’ in what passes for the Twizell mind. No, it was not “Mud, mud glorious mud” though I very nearly headed for a wallow down in the hollow of that ghastly section of mud-filled trench at the top of the course but rather another more dainty ditty containing such apposite phrases as “By brooks too broad for leaping, the lightfoot lads are laid with rose lipped girls a sleeping…” -  (AE Housman, A Shropshire Lad). Well you get the gist. Perhaps spring is not so far away…

 

As I accelerated (honest) into the woods for the final time another passing fancy flitted through the wasteland of consciousness – had anyone else experienced a brief moment of regret[1] at the fate of those snowdrops there or was mine the only poetic heart abroad that day? Could they not have run around them, as I did?

 

Spurred on by these and other quite irrelevant thoughts, the finish was upon me before I knew it; certainly before I had time to execute my cunning plan to make up ground upon Messrs Gibson and Wood but not before that Chorley runner had found some better ground and snuck past me on the run-in.

 

As I left for home, I reflected ruefully that I am never going to be a “runner” for there were Mick Cronshaw, John Houghton and A.N. Other completing a warm down lap of the University campus in that slicing wind. Well done to them and all the others who “got round”.