Neither London nor Boston but internet solecisms.
Friday 14 April 2006
Our continuing mission: to boldly drivel where no running publication has drivelled before.
Eddie died after 10pm on Wednesday 27 March. He put up a good fight for a long time. He will be missed.
There are some things, like the cricket season and the Barry 40, you never quite get away from. As soon as they're over, preparations start for the next one. Just as the hounds of spring do their stuff, Yvonne starts pushing tickets for the annual Dinner Dance, to be held yet again at Fairwater Conservative Club. Prices are a very reasonable £10.
Ken continues to recover from his operation (as reported in last month's Ace). His ever-caring son-in-law, Richie Bullen, dragged him all the way out to Carmarthen to watch two generations of his descendants -- Yvonne and Joel -- fool about in struggle through the United Counties Showground quagmire. Richie claims he looked after Ken's every creature comfort. "I gave him a deckchair!" Just the thing for those windy March days.
A reader writes ...
I often read your web site as Mel James is my brother-in-law and I like to see what he's up to.!
I have just been speaking to my sister Jan, and she was telling me that one of your members, Ken Bray, has just had a triple heart by-pass, so thought I would pass on this story.
My husband Barry has run for years ( just for fun) but had a triple bypass 3 years ago, so that should have stopped him. But he didn't give up and kept at it and about 6 months after the operation he he joined the 'City to Surf' fun run here in Perth and completed it. They even reported it in the newspaper. He still runs 10 kilometres every Sunday (he's 56).
So best wishes to Ken and Mavis and as far as Mel goes, he is the best brother-in-law in the world (I think that's what he told me to say!)
Heather Newman-Sparks
The final Gwent League of the 2001/2 season saw the highest scoring 'B' team member ever. John Cox finished 18th overall, and fourth in the club, one place ahead of the Goat. A shaken Mick McGeoch was heard to mutter "It's bad enough slipping out of the scoring in the 'A' team, but when the 'Bs' starting passing you as well, you know the end is well and truly nigh."
John claims to have been inspired by the last scoring 'A' team runner, David J Williams, who promised to 'bury' him (John) in the race. (Graham Henry laments "I could have done with that young man's motivational skills.") A rematch is scheduled for the Islwyn Half on the 24th, but John Huggins won't take any more bets on the boy Cox. "I've got to make a living," he is reported to have said.
As outgoing club captain. John was responsible for team selection. Rumours that he will "do a Geran Hughes" and give the captain's award to himself appear to be unfounded.
Joel Bullen finished a gallant 32nd in his emotional swansong appearance for Les Croups, watched by an excited crowd of his dad, before his controversial transfer to 'the big boys' club' Cardiff AAC. Richie concedes that his motto "You're never too old to run for Les Croups" now needs the rider, "unless you're eleven."
If there is anyone in the civilised universe who has not yet been told, Ceri Donovan ran a personal best of nine and a half minutes to finish the Bath Half Marathon in 1 hour 44 minutes and 40 seconds?
I've been receiving several queries about our cover star, who is sadly not available for supermarket openings, bar mitzvahs, or endorsements of government initiatives. (He could be talked into next year's BAFTAs, but we doubt you could afford the bar bill, darling.) When not jetting off to Belgium, Ireland, or Spain, as he seems to do every weekend, he holds a 'full-time' post at Cardiff University.
However, not everyone thinks he deserves to be the public face of the club. I beg to differ. (Well, I don't beg. I just do. Period.) First, if I had to choose on merit, I'd be bound to offend someone. Should I pick Wendy Edwards because she's led the ladies team home over the winter season? Or Edwina Turner, because she has the best marathon time of all presently active lady members? Or Mick for sustained excellence and unflagging effort? Or even Paul Wheeler, leading candidate for the Bart Simpson 'Underachiever and Proud of It' T-shirt (yet can still finish a minute clear of the next runner in the club)? Lots more members have just as strong, if not stronger, cases.
Second, we're not an elite club. I'd quite like to have the club spirit emblemised by the 20-year-old Steve Ovett, but he never joined. Alan Thomas took the photo of Dave as he was overtaking David Price in the Newport 10 in 1998. Dave was 36 then, probably a lot younger than the median age of membership now, but not unrepresentative. Dave is pretty much the modal club athlete: that he has a strictish routine for running doesn't stop him enjoying himself the rest of the time.
If this site attracts people to join, they won't be teenage track stars going up to university. They'll be comparatively new to running; anyone who's been around competitions for a bit will know we exist, and this site won't make a difference one way or the other. Barry Johnston told me that when he started running he ran past Pontcanna Fields one Sunday morning and saw David Lloyd (he's hard to avoid) coming the other way with a number on his chest, and a lot of others, also wearing numbers, in pursuit. That was the year Lloydy won the handicap. Barry knew Dave anyway, as they both drank in the Gower in Roath, but he still wouldn't have exposed himself to a club at that point. I've got Dave where he is, because nobody could look at him and think you have to be a slyph-like natural athlete to come down on a Thursday. I could simply have said this, but nothing works as well as a picture.
Dave isn't a bad runner by any standards. He's never expected an invite from the British Milers' Club, but anyone who's run 16 minutes for 5k, 58 for ten miles, and 2 hours 51 for the marathon is a good club runner in my book. Now he's 40, he's still in the top quarter at Ballycotton. You can look at the home page in two ways. You can see Dave the representative of every runner. Or you can see clubable and competitive Dave, the standard bearer of Les Croupiers.
Finally, there's the issue of file size, or why Jeff Aston calls the www the World Wide Wait. Apart from my personal preference for arguing from the concrete and particular, rather than the general and abstract, a composite picture would be a lot larger. (Besides, showing several people would come back to the issues I hope I dismissed above.) As Dave himself will tell you, he's always loaded quickly, and the image is perfect 6k, which doesn't hang about when getting through a modem.
A couple of months ago, I casually quoted a line from Alabama Song. If anyone asked, I would passed this off as a casual reference to (The Rise and Fall of the City of) Mahogany, one of the better known (of the many) operas by Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill. However, Mr McGeoch clearly knows my inner life too well. "It's early Doors", he wrote in a email. With sayings like that, can the camelhair coat be far behind?
Speaking of which, Barry Johnston is yet to complain about the caption on his portrait. (For any Welsh patriots out there who think my musical tastes lean too much to the far side of the Atlantic, John Cale was born in South Wales.) I can, I admit, get carried away with these popular music references. There's even one on the race calendar page.
(2 March)
As the Ballycotton 10 looms, I've realised that this will be my first visit ever to Ireland. Whatever I do, I will be seen as an ignorant foreigner. It may be hopless, but I had to try to master the local speech. While I can just about say "Drink!" as if I meant it, I cannot get the right attack on the word "Girls!".
And I get the vowel sound in "Feck!" totally wrong. I am sure to stand out in the local hostelries.
Andy Cleves won the Welsh Ultra Distance Championships (which were held at Barry again, you'd think they could spread it about a bit), and Richard Brewer finally retired from ultra running (at the third asking) after collecting one of the last of the special commemorative mugs. At one point Dick seemed to be locked in a real battle of wills with Ian Little of Wellingborough & District. Round and round and round they went at 1:55 per lap, until I was moved to shout out "He's got a better sprint finish than you; you've got to burn him off over the next thirty miles." Well, Terry Caveney thought it funny, and I'm still amused by the thought of Dick gallantly knocking out clockwork lap after clockwork lap, his head bucking up and down like a startled horse until the bell when Ian would scamper away on fresh legs. Actually, Ian grew more confident as the race went on, and may even have run a negative split. He did manage a very aggressive final half mile, which wasn't quite enough to beat Sam Moore (though one more lap would have gained him two places). All the more frustrating, as Dick reports that Sam stopped for a fag at 20 miles.
If Sam Moore's nicotine cravings didn't cast enough doubts over ultra running as a healthy pursuit, there is something about running over thirty miles that sucks the natural grace from even one so well endowed with it as Andy Cleves. With the exception of Ian Little, who'd clearly underestimated his abilities, the private battles with demons got more public with every lap. By the time Barry Johnston came down to watch, the surviving parade was an excellent advertisment for taking up golf.
Last updated 14 April 2006
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