NWFPAC ‘Michael Page’ Championship 2023 – Race 1: Heaton Parkrun

It was only as we were leaving the café post run that Dave asked me to produce the race report. With a bumper turnout of 17 and another 704 people to get in our way, this was always going to be tough, especially as I only saw a handful of my fellow NWFPAC once the race started, so this may be as patchwork as Pulp Fiction.

I’ve been to Heaton Park twice before, once for the 10k race a few years back that climbed a different hill, and once to watch the Stone Roses, so neither recce helped me to ascertain what Dave meant by ‘nicely undulating’.

After the initial scrum from the start (most of the throng wanting to start at the front and then the challenge of getting round a 90 degree bend 400m later) I settled into what I hoped was not too fast a pace tucked in just behind Byron (great to see him back racing!!) hoping that he wouldn’t notice, so as not to anger him into speeding up, and that I could hang in there for a while and maybe see what happened in the last mile.

It was in the café after the first race of last season when I first met Charles, not realising he had finished way ahead of me. This year that was what Mike Ginn did, he and Charles having already disappeared far enough up the road to know that we were only vying for the Champions’ League places rather than the win (great run Charles and great PB).

My tactic seemed to be working for the first mile until, in one swift pincer movement, Charlie B passed me on one side and Dave Chambers on the other - see the photo for the pre pincer action shot that has me in the orange, hiding behind Byron, with Dave in green to the left and Charlie in the black behind me to the right.

The main hill was just round the corner and I managed to keep Dave to arm’s length (well Mr Tickles arm’s length) as Byron and Charlie pulled a bit further ahead (I put that down to my extra weight and the fact that they probably didn’t have 3 days on the “sauce” last weekend). 2k down.

The third kilometre round the back of the house was the one where it’s most difficult mentally to dig in. The legs and lungs still burning from the hill, the gaps had opened up in front now, only Dave was in sight in front, and I could only hear one person behind (maybe my gasping for oxygen was drowning out the others). So the mind starts to wander, it’s only the first race of the year, a couple of places won’t matter that much. But you’ve got 3k left regardless, after pushing hard for the first 2k it’s always going to be uncomfortable, whatever pace you go at, and the faster you go, the sooner it’s over right? So instead you (or maybe it’s just me?) start doing unfathomable puzzles in your head to take your mind off the pain, like the 9 times table, or how many pairs of trainers does Michael Mannings go through in a month and does he actually have a full time job to pay for them … that sort of thing. If you can stick at it through the tough phases, sometimes you get a second wind.

And so it was as “Steve” overtook me and dragged me back up to Dave just at start of the descent and we (for Steve and I were a team for the next mile) took a bit of lead out of Dave down the hill that I hoped would be enough to see me through to the finish – I daren’t look round to see what the gap was because that would give away how much I was fighting it – having seen the results since, I would have also seen Tim just behind Dave, so that wouldn’t have helped.

Back to Dave’s pre-race email, “round the back of the lake to the finish which is quick and makes up the time you lost on the hill”. If it is, it certainly didn’t feel it. Steve deserted me with a couple of corners to go and I also lost another place to a fast finishing lady – the benefit of gender placings, I knew that wouldn’t cost me and I had enough in the tank to hold off some bloke putting in a sprint finish. Now just the wait to see how many more ladies would finish to see whether Daria and/or Claire would push me out of the Europa League places. Sadly the answer was convincingly not enough, although I should have known that Claire was taking it seriously as she didn’t run with her dog Isla.

After completing the first undulating lap and getting halfway up the hill, I scoffed at Dave’s suggestion that this is a quick course that is “PB’able”, but so it proved to be for 4 of our group (arguably 5 as Dave Chambers equalled his time from last year). Unfortunately for Charles, his PB wasn’t quite enough to edge out Daria for the win.

By the time I’d got my breath back and found the park run bar code on my watch Stephen and Stewart had already finished but I able to watch the closing stages of the race for the Europa Conference League placings on this one, as Alan Reynolds nudged out Josh (congratulations on the PB though, only going to get faster and faster) and Dave S. Apologies to Alan for my initial shock at this, as I seemed to think he would previously have finished third out of that trio. Delighted also that my teammate Nicola (self-confessed no training and needing to be talked in to taking part as recently as Friday afternoon) put in a solid performance to take points off both Josh and Dave – I’ll gloss over the fact that Nicola did admit to being overtaken by Isla late in the race, and I even sacrificed some of my bacon butty to Isla to try and fatten her up so it didn’t happen again.

Great turnout for the race and the post-race coffee, looking forward to the next one already (coffee that is, the race part is horrible!)