training for whernside

[Carlos the Jackal]

...and you still finished in front of me. I only really remember it as I was taken by surprise as you and Matt came flying past me along the final bridleway before dropping through the final fields to the finish.

Anyway enjoy this year's race.

multi, you have me spooked. you seem to know who i am but i don't have the faintest who you are, sorry.

there was only one race i have done when the clag was worse than that day and that was jura. that did frightened me. i had no clue where i was, at least at whernside i had an idea.

[Brotherton Lad]

i don't like change. i feel safe in the old ways. i would like to go back there. stupid i know.

Interesting, there we differ. It's clearly impossible to go back, the whole paradigm shifts constantly. I'm fond of the old ways, of course, and like to refer to them, but I relish change. Don't you get that dynamic from your grandson?

[Carlos the Jackal]

i do but at the same time i worry for him. i just wonder where the world is going to end, not in the destruction sense but take the footballers behaviour, gangland shootings because someone else has another post code and the gangs of women out on the town flashing all they have. generations of families who don't work or want to work. the world is such a wonderful place and i just wish we all could work together and make it more wonderful.

[Brotherton Lad]

I suppose I'm lucky. My wife is still serving, so we live on Army patches where life is pretty much as I remember it in the 60s, tidy, self-policing, friendly and supportive. Plenty of charitable works going on ( something I do because I have the time and inclination), sport etc.

It's eye-opening to wander into parts of Bradford or Birmingham, for example, but I still feel generally safe, I reckon well over 90% of people are on side, if you deal with them fairly and confidently. On the other hand, I have seen much worse deprivation and horror in other parts of the world, bodies and parts of bodies just left on the ground where they were killed, for example, which tends to put things into persective for me.

Another lesson I took from Bosnia was that you can't save all the world, but (and there's a quote in here from Mother Teresa or similar) if you save one person, you do save the world.

BTW I haven't done the Jura race but recced it in 95 for the Scottish Isles race (sailing and running), from the hotel, over the Paps and back. I was alone on the descent, got crag bound and found that very unsettling. Still, fond memories, unbeknownst to us at the time, our eldest son is a product of the Jura Hotel.