Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 02:42:02 +0100 (BST)
From: Roger Griffin
To: Richard Griffin

[...] All this business of being 70 reminds me, I went and stayed
overnight with [...] in Nottingham last Saturday week, and ran in the
Robin Hood marathon on the Sunday.  I just wanted to restore my 'good for
age' qualification so as to get an entry for London next year in case I
feel like doing that one.  The good-for-age time when you are a poor old
man like me is 5 hours(!); I did it in 3:42 which is another PW but not
too bad in relation to the allegedly good time - I could have stopped at
a cafe on the way and had a leisurely lunch and still made the needful
time!  [My brother Alan] heard about it and was incensed that there was
no prize given for M70s, and he had the nerve to write to the organisers
and complain - and today they dutifully sent me a 25-pound Sweatshop
voucher with a nice letter saying that "it had come to their attention"
that I had won the M70 group and although they did not really intend to
offer a prize they thought that I deserved one for my "considerable
effort"!  Actually it was not nearly such an effort as the five previous
marathons have been, on each of which I really have been hard pressed to
finish owing to running out of energy before the end.  After finding the
same thing on my sponsored run a couple of weeks earlier, where I seemed
to be tired out after 50 laps but was quite all right again when I had
had some lunch, I ate ever such a lot of potatoes the evening before the
Robin Hood, and had no trouble finishing and had no need to lie
spreadeagled on the grass for an hour afterwards!

A couple of days ago I ran in the annual Chariots of Fire relay.  I was a
bit insulted to be put by the man who organises the St. John's three
teams (quite a young man; he did the Robin Hood HALF-marathon, in 1:59!)
in the *third* team.  I was running fourth out of the six in the team,
and when I took over we were about two minutes down on the second team.
But I seemed to be in devastating form and gained 57 places on my leg of
the race! - and one of them was the second team's place, and our
subsequent runners evidently capitalised on that because our nominally
third team came in 98th (out of 391) whereas the 'second' team was 170th!