NWFPAC ‘Michael Page’ Championship 2024 – Race 2: Wigan Half

I’ve been badgering Dave Simmons for a couple of years to get Wigan’s Haigh Hall park run on the race calendar but to no avail.  With excuses that it’s too far away, congested start, uneven terrain etc made it clear it was never going to happen …. but by the time the runners in yesterday’s Wigan Half Marathon got to that part of the course that overlapped some of the park run route, they were going up a long steep hill, only 2/3s into the race and wishing it had only been a 5k, but more on that later!  With a bit of luck, when compiling this year’s race list the timings fell right for the half marathon event to be at Wigan and unbelievably Dave agreed – I may have underplayed how “undulating” it was in the second half!

Unfortunately, since the race list was set before Christmas, I’ve been struggling with injuries so, if I hadn’t spent some time recently with the excellent Karl Morris (https://actioncoach.co.uk/coaches/karl-morris/) I could have given you a load of reasons why I can’t run very fast at the minute.  However, anyone that has seen Karl knows that these are just below the line excuses, so I had to look for the positives for the situation instead.  Plus you’re not supposed to win your home race are you!

The great thing about our races is that generally, no matter how fast (or not) you are, there’s always a mini-race to be found to give you something to battle for.

And so it was that I arrived at the park 15 minutes before the start, rubbed the foot of the statute for good luck (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Francis_Powell,_1st_Baronet) and made my way into the starting pen.  Thankfully I was too late to be able to get to the front and fall into the trap of trying to match the racing snakes for the first km and completely destroying any race strategy I might have, and instead set off a relatively steady trot, wondering whether I would see any fellow NWFPACers.

I didn’t have to wait long, going round the second corner I caught up to Alan Reynolds, said hello, and kept going, wondering whether I might see Dave Simmons – but knowing he’s a notoriously fast starter, my best chance of seeing him would be if I could hold on to a reasonable pace and he might fade.  Spoiler alert, neither of those things happened!

The first couple of miles were a nice flat road plod along to the bottom of Beech Hill before turning to cross the Leeds Liverpool canal and the River Douglas and then taking our first mini hill of the day round the slightly less scenic Martland Park industrial estate.  Sadly gravity is not my friend at the minute and Al, having mastered the steady start better than I, duly came back past me whilst I was chatting to some bloke called Rob, who is running the Manchester and London marathons in successive weeks.  We carried on chatting as the route meandered towards and round the marvellous JJBernabeau stadium before I decided that, whilst I’d only managed 12k in training, this is a race and I should at least make an attempt to stop Al disappearing out of sight.  In this I was frustratingly successful.

The next 3 miles were along the canal and I traded running buddies for a bloke called Dan and we dragged ourselves up a few places as we passed round the carousel on the canal by wigan pier and then on up towards “top lock”.  The route turns off into Haigh Hall country park before you get to top lock, but what you do get is a series of locks on the way, each one providing another ramp to sap your legs that little bit more.

Feeling like much more than just after halfway, the route then takes a 90 degree left and the real fun begins!  A mile of undulating trail giving way to a 2 mile climb up to Haigh Hall itself.  In the Wigan park run this is the second half of the course, the part where you are cursing yourself for going off too fast and trying to hang on.  For this race, the hanging on part was the same, watching helplessly as Al used his weight advantage to disappear into the distance.

Thankfully I wasn’t lonely for long as I was able to enjoy the procession of the faster NWFPACers who were coming back down the hill at pace!

First into view was Steven Henderson who was flying – frankly anyone that counts their half marathon time in minutes rather than “an hour and x minute” is going too fast.  The fact that Steven got a PB (congratulations!) shows that the course can’t have been that tough, although judging by the chat in the bandstand afterwards, no-one else shared this view!

Next down the hill was Mike Ginn (who unscientifically calculated that the course was about 2 minutes slower than a flat half marathon), with a very broad grin on his face, much broader than my grin would be if Charles Singlehurst was only 10 seconds behind me, but the expressions on both their faces meant that the battle between them had already been settled with 2 miles to go.

Then I saw Aisha bounding down the hill looking far happier than anyone should after 11 miles – maybe she wasn’t aware that she still had one more hill to climb!

Thankfully I’d managed to keep enough pace to not see Dave Simmons or Josh Nelson going the other way, not that I thought I could catch them, but it was nice to leave Dave not knowing where I was and making him wonder whether or not I might appear!

There was a muddy bog for the last half mile of the climb, but thankfully I knew where the end of the climb was so I could get ready for the return journey down the hill (where I managed to look up from my toes long enough to say hi to Sian Marsden), drag myself up the short steep climb at the plantation gates and then turn the corner for the last mile down to the finish.

Finally, I could see Al again, but he was a good 200 yards or so down the road.  Like most people, my GPS had got lost in the trees so I wasn’t sure how long was left.  I was already going to end up with a much faster time that I expected when I finished my Guinness the night before, and I knew that even if I could catch Al, it was probably only be worth 3 or 4 points, but knowing there can’t be more than a mile left I gave it a go to try and keep him honest and picked the pace up for 500 metres, but sadly so did Al and I made no dent in his lead!  Third new running buddy Calum persuaded me to join him in a sprint finish, I didn’t beat him either, but we did finish narrowly behind previous buddies Dan and Rob.

I knew lack of points was complete when I was collecting my water and goodie bag (complete with an uncle joe’s mint ball - https://uncle-joes.com/) and heard Briony Fagan’s name on the tannoy as she finished, knowing she had a good gender placing (with a PB to boot!).  I consoled myself with a post-race massage and knowing I had done well in my weight category!

There was a good post-race turnout on the bandstand with the local singer, but only 3 of us made it for the post-race pie.

A special mention to Daisy and a reminder for all that, for the races, it’s the actual places that matter, not the chip time, as she lost a point to Briony despite running the course 9 seconds faster!  When we did the Style Mill 10k last year one wily old runner I knew was stood right at the front before the narrow steep climb up the hill straight from the start.  When I asked him why he was standing ahead of the obviously faster runners his response was simply, “that’s a them problem”.