The Last Word

COACH PHIL’S RUNNING CLUB

You must forgive me loyal reader(s) if any of what I am about to write descends into gibberish. Yesterday, for some unknown reason, I ran, in the loosest sense of the word, the Bristol Half Marathon. Apparently, according to The Oracle, or the internet as it’s known these days, the human body has about 600 muscles and I’m fairly sure a decent 90% of them ache including, bizarrely, my fingers. The other 10% are, I’m fairly certain, in my ears and they clearly don’t work properly anyway as otherwise I’d have heard people saying “No Phil don’t run 21km around Bristol on a sunny September Sunday morning. Stay home and have cake instead”. Alas I didn’t hear those wise, wise words and instead I went and had a go.

The actual day itself was really quite pleasant, I was with two lovely ladies, Helen and Jenna, protégés of Coach Phil’s Running

Club. We were all chatting away on the journey there, making merry, laughing and joking and generally looking forward to a good, fun time racing around the streets of Bristol. The journey home was somewhat quieter. In fact one of us was almost sick; no names, no pack drill as they say but it wasn’t me! We all finished it though, which was fantastic. To call Bristol city centre hilly would be a bit of a stretch but who knew it had that many slopes? When I’ve been there before I hadn’t noticed how many times you are, ever so gradually, making your way upwards. Of course that could be something to do with the amount of cider I’d had on board at the time as the only real reason, up until Sunday, to go to Brizzle was to get drunk and fall over!

The amount of people that put so much effort into doing mass participation races like this always astounds me. There are speedy greyhound people who are very serious (and rightly so) right down to your St. Bernards who have all the motivation to do well but unfortunately not the fitness or the physique. I am somewhere in the middle. I like to think of myself as an old, slightly overweight, labrador; I’m greying at the muzzle, sound

a bit throaty when running and like food as a reward when it’s all over. Everybody though, whatever their shape, size, culture, colour or creed, is having a go and it’s a rather beautiful thing to see. Once you change out of your ‘day’ clothes and into your running kit you cease to be big or small, black or white, Christian or Muslim, you are just a runner and you are each going to put yourselves through a lot and at the end, unless you are one of the greyhounds, all you get really is the satisfaction of finishing… Jenna, Helen and I did that…well done us!

Phil Rockliffe

“I like to think of myself as an old, slightly overweight, labrador; I’m greying at the muzzle, sound a bit throaty when running and like food as a reward when it’s all over.”