A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Mountain marathons

This weekend I was glad to be sat in restaurants in Siena, enjoying a glass or two of Chianti Classico and some bistecca fiorentina in 27c sunshine, rather than competing like I used to in the Original Mountain Marathon (known in my day as the Karrimor).

Many people will have seen on the news (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cumbria/7691893.stm) that the race  was a bit damp this year.

My brother and his wife were competing this year so I am particularly relieved everyone got off the mountain safely - though my brother says the situation was exagerated by the media and the only reason competitors appeared to be "missing" was because it was difficult to reach race HQ through 4 feet of water to check back in.

Between the ages of 16 and 21 I competed in 5 of these annual mountain marathons, completing 3 (Howgills, Argyll and Galloway) and pulling out of the others because of snow in one case and injury in the other. The race involves navigating 26 miles - in the easiest "class" - as the crow flies (further in practice) with an overnight camp.

Any criticism of the organisers on safety grounds is well off the mark as they enforce rigid regulations about the survival clothing, kit, tent and food you carry and are themselves fell-runners with decades of experience.

One day I hope to return to the level of fitness to do a mountain marathon again - I'm glad it wasn't this year I tried.

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

So where's the restaurant review?

6:48 pm, October 27, 2008

 
Blogger Mark Still News said...

You need to practice a lot, as you've got 1 hell of a big mountain to climb up to the coming general election, without any adequate gear or substance?

10:53 pm, October 27, 2008

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is it just me or is the world going backwards:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7693816.stm

First we had the reintroduction of whaling and now the sale of Ivory.

Is the West losing its teeth....?

7:22 pm, October 28, 2008

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dspite all what Brown has been saying about helping those in financial difficulty....they go and pass a motion such as this:

We going backwards


I really hope this isn't true Luke as if you really on planning on giving these thugs power of entry.....then I'm afraid we are heading down a very dangerous path.

What a sad day for this country. I'm disgusted and shocked we haven't heard more about this.

8:12 pm, October 28, 2008

 
Blogger Mark Still News said...

Its shameful and surely will create a greater demand for Ivory. We are really going backwards and undermines the work of campaigners in the not to distant past.

8:35 pm, October 28, 2008

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Luke wrote: "This weekend I was glad to be sat ..."

perhaps he meant:

"This weekend I was glad to be sitting ..."

4:27 am, October 29, 2008

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What can you expect?

Assisted places scheme. You can take the boy out of the street but you can't ...

4:39 pm, October 29, 2008

 

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