On the comeback trail

Tooley at my 40th birthday party

Tooley (also known as Paul Toole), is not only my training partner but also one of my best friends. Over the years we've run over dozens of hills and put the world to rights along the way. He's often told me that he would recognise my backside as easily as he would his wife's in an identity parade (he's followed it up so many hills!) I think you will understand that it came as a big shock when I sent him a text out of the blue last week and the reply came back "Who is this? I've changed my phone and don't have my old numbers in here". Shock, horror! How can this be? I have to say that I felt slightly offended and a little bit snubbed! 'This is me. How can you not recognise my text?' Okay, maybe he would forget the eleven digit number but how could he not recognise my writing style?! Well I got straight back to him "This is the only person in the world who knows the perfect place to scatter your ashes!" Yes - that told him! He knew straight away who it was then!

Whichever route we took on a Sunday we would make our way up to the trigg point on the top of Bowstones and look out over the Cheshire Plain. From there you can see Alderley Edge, Jodrell Bank and on a clear day you can see all the way to North Wales. Many's the time that Tooley has told me he wants his ashes scattering there when he dies, "but you'll have to bring Di [Tooley's wife] up here to show her the spot!"

So what happened? How did it happen? How did those Sunday morning runs gradually cease to exist? I'm afraid it's that four letter word - WORK. Not that one of us was working every Sunday but work started to get in the way of the week day runs too and so as fitness was gradually lost the motivation to go out for two hours at nine o' clock on a Sunday morning faded too. I have to say that he's been worse than me for letting it slip. I still run several times a week and keep a fairly good level of fitness, albeit less than I'd like it to be, but Tooley eventually stopped completely.

Well I'm pleased to say that the upshot of the recent text exchange was a date for, not a two hour run in the hills, but a 40 minute run round the park on Sunday. I've got a little way to go before I'll be back to two hours on the hills and Tooley has even further to go but we've made a good start! Before we set off he literally had to take the cobwebs out of his shoes! This is not a figure of speech - he really did have cobwebs in there! When we were around half way he confessed that he had been extremely nervous about doing the run. "I haven't run for such a long time. I wasn't sure how long I'd be able to run for." The thing is though, once a runner always a runner. Fitness is much easier to claim back than to gain from scratch. By the end he was almost spouting poetry, such was the level of the endorphin rush that he was enjoying! It was a great morning for running, a light but warm drizzle and the park pretty much to ourselves. I don't know how he was on Monday but I suspect DOMS may have been present in some shape or form. Anyway, that's the first one done. There's another date in the diary for a couple of weeks time. It won't be long before we're up on that trigg point again deciding what we'll have on our epitaph!