I've not really talked about my running much recently, and that's because it's not been going very well. However, all that's for another post. Today it's time for another installment from the homeland.
Friday saw Golden Wedding celebrations chez les olds. Saturday was spent recovering. Today was spent exhausting ourselves again - this time through the medium of running. My sister and I decided that this was the year we were going to enter our hometown race, the Donkey Brae Run. It's a 7 miler between our hometown and the next, mostly along really beautiful coastal paths but with 2 killer hills. The race organisers are nice in that they let you run down both hills, but sadly they also make you run up them too - one fairly near the start and one just before the end.
We both puffed our ways round, staying broadly within sight of each other for the whole race, changing leads frequently as one or other of us felt the pace slipping for a while. We managed a very creditable 73 minutes, with which we are both extremely happy. And we crossed the finish line together, which just added icing to the cake for me.
It was an achievement for us both - while my sister has been running triathlons for the last few years, being a full time mum she doesn't have the time to train at the moment so it was pretty much her residual fitness that got her through. I've only been running for just over a year and I'm still struggling to get my pace and stamina sorted. As regular readers will know, I'm training for my first (and probably only) marathon in October. At the moment, it's touch and go if I'll make it. But today has helped re-bolster my confidence and kick me back into my training regime. So an achievement for us both.
Even her 8 year old son had a go and came in the top 20 or so of runners for his 1 mile fun run. And the olds, well they spectated, held jackets and cheered us home. All in all a true family effort.
But the real achievement of the day in my opinion went to the last runner home of the day. The dad of my best friend from school, Dick has in his time been a serious and very good marathon runner. He's run in almost every Donkey Brae Run and competed this year, in the run up to his 80th birthday, in honour of his wife, Maureen, who was so sadly taken from her family a few weeks back. I was at her funeral and I can safely say it was one of the saddest yet bitter sweet events I've ever attended.
Maureen was a second mum to me growing up. I was forever at their house, playing with my best friend when we were younger, and then just mooching when we hit the teenage years. Maureen and Dick took me on my first ever skiing trip and my first real holiday abroad. They allowed us to have the rite of passage teenage parties and Maureen even made the most fabulous spread of food before leaving us to get on with it on our own. I was genuinely heart broken to see her go.
But I was even more heart broken to understand what she had endured in her final years. Not for Maureen a graceful decline into old age. No, instead she developed a terrible illness known as Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, or PSP for short. It's a disease I'd never heard of before and is often misdiagnosed as Parkinson's. Not only is the disease, as the name suggests, progressive and degenerative - worse, there is as yet, no treatment and no cure.
As ever, Maureen faced her illness with calm and courage. She still managed to visit her extended family and to be the mother, grandmother and friend to many that she was throughout her life. After her death, Dick is attempting to fight the illness in his own way. He ran the 7 mile killer Donkey Brae Run today at almost 80, in honour of his dearly loved wife, but also to raise money in the hopes that one day the medical community may have treatments if not perhaps cures for this unimaginable affliction. If you want to help Dick in his own personal fight, feel free to drop in to the PSP Association website and make a donation. I know he'd be grateful.
