GROUNDHOG RELAY
NORTHERN SIX STAGE ROAD RELAYS
I'm always happy to help out the team, but a return to racing on this contrived course from hell at Sportcity expanded my flexibility to it's limits. If running the inside and outside shape of a horseshoe around the Etihad Stadium, followed by an equally featureless journey around the outer expanses of a car park wasn't bad enough, I had to do two laps of it all. I was here two years ago for Blackburn Harriers - it was the most dull, flat, mundane, contrived course I had ever raced then, so with an extra 1.2 kilometres of it this time around, that did nothing to ease my fraught relationship with this place.
That said, and repeating sentiments expressed from that last trip here, it is a great venue from a logistical point of view. No traffic, no pedestrians or cyclists to dodge around, easy parking, good for spectating and a super base camp in the athletics arena. For the fast lads and road heads I dare say the course is ideal too, but for a lover of hills, greenery and vintage architecture, running around there as fast as I could was done for absolutely no other reason than a sheer primitive duty to my club.
Manchester City might be the best football team in the land right now and the stadium may look lush on the inside, but this concrete corner to the east of the city is a soulless spanse of clinical design. As a regular visitor to City's old ground at Maine Road in my teenage years, I guess the aesthetics, or should I say the distinct lack of them at this modern replacement and relocation, disappoints me even more. I just can't connect the two Man City's together. The name of the club hasn't changed but everything else has. My Dad was a Bolton fan and similarly, I was a regular visitor to Burnden Park. Now The Trotters trot out at a stadium on a retail park out of town. Sentiment probably clouds my vision on this subject to a degree, but soul and character is something modern football stadia just doesn't encapsulate in my opinion. At least not in Manchester City or Bolton - or should I say, East Manchester and Horwich.
Back to the racing then and for all my moaning and groaning about the course, these relays bring out plenty of great running talent from the North of England and it's a rare opportunity to see some of the best up against each other.
At Ribble Valley Harriers, on paper great things looked possible with our prospective line ups in the Ladies and Men's 'A' teams. But Katie Walshaw was bolted off her horse the night before and only deemed herself unfit to run just before the start. Prior to that, two potentially big players in the Men's 'A' team dropped out. Michael Cayton's calf strain didn't hamper his impressive training run the day before and suggested that a more than adequate shift could have been put in for the team. However it seems Michael brings nothing less than his A+ game to the race table and had disappointingly opted out. Unpredictable Josh Boyle went quiet on the days leading up to the race and when prompted, said he had a niggle. A gifted and talented young individual, but ultimately unreliable. For me, both guys a little void of spirit and ambition when it comes to team competition, which is crazy when one considers how good they are and how good this team could have been with them in it. The pair missed a fantastic opportunity to team up with fellow big hitters Chris Holdworth and Callum Davidson. They could have played a part in something special on the men's debut at this competition, but it wasn't to be. In contrast, Chris and Callum seem very team orientated and always at the ready the relish a challenge.
In the final reckoning though, the Ladies 'A' team held out for a fine 7th place and the patched up Men's 'A' did enough to qualify for the National's, so far from entirely disastrous in the end. The Team 'B's ended up all at sea though. To buffer the 'A' team, Ladies 'B' ran a lass short and finished incomplete, as did our men's who were also one short. We ended up as either an incomplete team, disqualified, or both. There was a rumour that Ste Hall ran twice, the second time under the disguise of a black cap. I mean, how ridiculous. What sort of an outfit would pull a stunt like that? To quote Arsene Wenger on this one, "I didn't see anything".
I ran the third leg and there really wasn't that much to report other than I passed a few and probably a good few less than actually went past me. If the course wasn't repetitive enough, then the continuous sight and sound of Clayton-le-Moors coach Phil Hall all over the course did nothing to reverse by ailing state of mental wellbeing.
I wasn't particularly pleased with my time and thought I was probably thirty seconds shy of what I can do at the moment. But road racing creases me up these days. After two miles or so of hard running on the hard stuff, it's one ache and pain piling on top of the other and eventually feels like every niggle I've ever had comes back to haunt me. On that second lap it was just bloody awful, grimly hanging on to pace in the hope something doesn't go permanently ping. Get me back running on those fells please. The day after, I did just that and thankfully all was forgotten and those pavement pounding pain points subsided slightly. 

Sunday 23rd September 2018
NORTHERN SIX STAGE ROAD RELAY CHAMPIONSHIPS
My Stats - Ribble Valley Harriers 'B' Leg 3 (6.7K) 23:58