Early

Early this morning, I drove out to the showground at Hope in The Hope Valley.  I had risen at an ungodly hour to take our son Ian there. He had signed up for a gruelling running event and you needed to be there an hour early for the purposes of registration, picking up your running number and tracking device before receiving a pre-race briefing.

I was witnessing a sub-culture of which I knew and still know very little. The runners around me were dressed in their special  and ready to go - all with little backpacks containing  electrolytes, special energy gels, basic first aid kits and of course their obligatory smartphones. There were around three hundred runners in the first tranche.

Like my beloved son, they had all voluntarily signed up to run 50km - but not on flat roads or running tracks. The course of this event would take them up hill and down dale, arcing around  the Upper Derwent reservoirs. I know this terrain very well having walked most of those paths though of course I never considered running along them. It was enough for me to just plod like an ambling Asian elephant.

I watched them go and then drove home for a toasted bagel and a mug of morning tea.

Ian at the start

Soon after consuming this, we received a phone call. Ian was about 15km into the race and had decided he needed to drop out. What a shame! The weather was absolutely perfect for late September and The Peak District was bathed in glorious sunshine after a misty start.

At first I thought that he might have had a fall and perhaps suffered an injury but It turns out that he had received a work-related phone call and there was some pressing business he just had to iron out. He needed to be back on his laptop as soon as possible.

I went to pick him up at Ashopton Viaduct. What a bummer! He had been looking forward to this event for ages and had brought little Zach up from London for the weekend. I thought to myself - Hell, if he had not had a smartphone on him, the pressing work matter would have simply had to wait. Those things can be like little genii on your shoulder - never allowing you to truly get away and be free, always nagging at you with bleeps, rings and alerts.

By good fortune - tomorrow (Sunday) happens to be the day of the annual Sheffield 10km road race so Ian quickly signed up for it. Though not as gruelling as the 50km run in The Peak District would have been, the road race will provide a measure of consolation. 

I just hope his blasted phone doesn't ring half way round the course!

Dog walker at Hope Showground after the 50km runners had departed