I rarely make the Sunday runs nowadays but as I jogged down the hill to the club I was surprised to see a face, and figure, I did not recognise. Surprised that no-one had mentioned her because in television jargon she was ‘easy on the eye’. She was also distracting the other runners with only Gwynne seemingly going through her normal warm-up routine. It transpired that Wendy was also new to the rest of the group, having learned about our run via Google and the club web-site. However, she was only looking for six, rather than the planned ten, miles and needed to finish in Alderley Edge. It may be that the distance was not her true reservation, the Sunday run rarely attracts the cream or younger members of the club but, with the Waterloo Summer Series race the following day, the assembled company was today even more decrepit than usual and there were no girls. But Wendy was trapped; any proposed change of route to accommodate her was met with unanimous enthusiasm.
And so we set off for Alderley Edge, high spirits replacing the usual groans and expellation of excess wind. We all tried our best; she had old favourites like the 1991 Llandudno 10 and the Tour of Tameside (Roy was away so she missed-out on his 3:14 in the marathon at the London Olympics) and more ambitiously the trends in avante garde German cinema and the role of sea bass in corporate hospitality.
Normally after a few miles Dunks has reverted to his Franz Klammer shuffle, but today he was striding up the Edge. Rob has had a number of difficult years; the best physicians in the land have examined him, the top laboratories have tested his blood, the club psychologists have tried cajoling, empathising and bullying, but all to no avail. Suddenly at a stroke we had a cure.
But then Alderley and she was gone, perhaps after all a mirage.
I can, already, see the conversation at 9:02 on future Sundays, “perhaps if we wait just one more minute…”.
And for many years to come, on cold Winter Sunday mornings as a group of men of a certain age trudge through the rain and mud, above them will appear a little glow of warmth as they reminisce about the day that Wendy came to run with them.
Ian Ashcroft