Latest Striding Report - Penny Lane Striders

THE STRIDING REPORT | Issue 102 5
The Joy of Parbold
by Oonagh Jaquest
Joy:
1. The emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires.
2. Wallowing in mud
What is it
about a
running up
and down a
hill in
Lancashire
that
garners
rave
reviews,
runners
who come
Lawrence and Neil charge down the road
back year
after year
and this year a sold-out race? I have a theory and the theory is:
joy.
If you're looking for wisdom from a multi-terrain
veteran with tips to impart, look elsewhere.
Murakami I hear is good for philosophy. But if
you have a sneaking suspicion that running
should be just a little bit fun, read on...
The bald facts are this. Parbold Hill Race, in its
44th year in 2013, is six and three quarter miles
of muddy scenery laid on by Skelmersdale
Boundary Harriers. You start at a primary school
in the village of Bispham, wind your way along
tracks and across fields to eventually reach the
summit of Parbold Hill via a particularly brutal
section of road. And then you skid, fly, roll or
wallow until you finally get to the bottom,
perhaps even on your bottom. You may by the
end be anywhere from one quarter to three
quarters coated in mud, almost as if you'd had a
fight with a giant chocolate fountain. You will have taken in
1,600 feet or so of ascent. You may well be grinning like an
idiot in all the photographs.
Council cuts mean Frank can
no longer afford a razor
Murakami*. The sort of obstacles I'm talking about are stiles
and their kin: gates, fences, fences with haybales either side
to encourage showjumping comparisons, gullies and the odd
stream. Parbold Hill is teeming with them and there's
definitely a clue to the joy there.
I admit I approached the first few stiles with a certain glee.
You have a choice: join the queue or expend that extra bit of
energy scaling the adjacent gate and jumping. I scaled and I
jumped, m'lud, as did many
others. I may even have
overtaken some stronger
runners queueing for the stile,
only to be passed by their
superior stamina on a long hill
later. But cunning like a fox and a
devil-may-care
attitude to energy
conservation are
both fun, even if
you do know the
parable of the
tortoise and the
hare off by heart.
Chris is well on his way to a
Parbold PB
It has since been suggested to me that climbing
gates is "not the done thing" and that one really
ought to wait for the stile. This could fill the
letters page of the Striding Report for months:
there is something uniquely British about the
conjunction of an unwritten rule and a queue, I
reckon. I can tell you that pushing into a queue
would definitely be wrong. Also, that my prize for
obstacle most hilariously overcome obstacle
goes to the Liverpool Harrier I saw curl up and
roll under a barbed wire fence commando style! If he doesn't
have Bravo Two Zero *2 on his bedside table, I'd be most
surprised.
Obstacles
The courage to set
yourself training goals and
strive for them through
the pain barrier; the
serenity to cross train
through all manner of
injury; the wisdom to
know the difference. For
those kind of obstacles I
recommend you read
Unlike the rest of the field, Oonagh makes it look like a
walk in the park
Awe and wonder
The word awesome is overused. I can almost
guarantee that your new running shoes are
not awesome, although if they are trail shoes
with a lot of grip and you've no aversion to
getting them wet and dirty, all the better. But
you can't beat the view from the top of a hill
on a clear, sunny day and this year's Parbold
Hill race was perfect in that respect.
Wordsworth found awe in nature; that
childish sense that it's bigger than you, it's
really quite scary but you want to run
headlong into it anyway.*3 I don't know if he