The 46th Parbold Hill Race - 13th February 2016

The 46th Parbold Hill Race - 13th February 2016

Having had a look for a blog or race report about the 46th Parbold Hill Race this last weekend and failed to find one, I decided to give it a go myself.

So here goes....

I'd heard about this race for the first time last year when a running pal of mine, Stuart Tagg of St. Helens Striders, had taken part. When said friend messaged me sometime in January asking if I fancied it, I thought I'd give it a whirl.

The race is hosted by Skelmersdale Boundary Harriers who did a fantastic job organising the day.

The day arrived with yours truly in far from peak condition. With nose streaming with greater gusto than the deluges down some of Parbold's famed slopes (more of which later), and nursing a slight calf strain, the sensible option would have been to give it a miss. However, that would have been the brave man's option. I am far too cowardly to bottle out on such a pretext.

Anyway, the aforementioned Stuart and I rocked up early enough to secure a car parking space but inevitably didn't get one and ended up parking on the road. The race centre was a quaint little village primary school which immediately revived memories of sawdust covered mounds of vomit and those scratchy green paper towels from my own idyllic schooldays. In Haydock.

The place was abuzz with the sound of excited race chatter and frantically rubbing hands. Club colours abounded,  dominated by those red and black clad St Helens Striders.

The race began from the school field which was already facing redesignation as swamp land. We set off on what was possibly the loudest gunshot heard in Parbold since the heady days of the English Civil War which incidentally, never came near Parbold. Immediately we were faced with a gargantuan slope on a path so narrow that overtaking was almost impossible. This was more a mountain climb than a race. Heavy breathing was the sound of the moment and we weren't half a mile in.

The rest of the race can only be described as the toughest, coldest, muddiest and wettest hour of my running life. The field sections were comical in places as people slipped, slid and lost shoes in the sticky, six inch deep slutch. Stiles were negotiated, brambles dodged and at one point a river running down a slope made us feel like we were scaling a slightly colder version of the Niagara Falls. To a non runner, this sounds like the stuff of nightmares. Of course, it was the most fun I've ever had in a pair of (inappropriately chosen) running shoes. Even when they fell off.

A true celebrity scandal emerged a couple of miles in as the patient, polite and generally decent human beings waited without so much as a minor whinge at a stile which had created a bottleneck. So imagine our absolute horror as one scoundrel sauntered past the queue, climbed a gate (which was expressly forbidden by a lovely printed notice in the archaic school hall) and headed off. Being British, we expressed our fury with an inaudible tut and a shake of the head. The braver souls went as far as muttering under their breath. One hot blooded maverick among us, however, shouted down this rogue with an almost Herculean bravery. As the arch violator turned around, we were amazed to clap our eyes on none other than Stuart Pearce. Psycho. Former Nottingham Forest legend. Former England U21 coach. MBE no less. I don't know what Queen Elizabeth would think of this but I'll be writing a strongly worded letter soon demanding Pearce be stripped of his honour. I shall also be contacting TalkSport radio where I know he appears occasionally to out this former legend's blatant disregard for the etiquette  of the stile in front of the whole nation. Under a false name, obviously.

Anyway, the 6.8 Miles or so finished with everyone on great spirits. Mars bars were devoured, mud washed off shoes that looked more like the boots of an infantryman in Paschendaale and we got back into the car to find that Everton were 1-0 down at home to West Brom.

All in all, a great race. I managed a time of 1:06 or something but the beauty of this race is that times are irrelevant. The odd distance and the crazy conditions meant that everyone was there for the fun and the experience rather than chasing a PB. The winner won in 45 minutes. God knows how.