An Oldie, Recently Joined

Let me introduced myself. My name’s Walter. I’ve joined Red Rose because I managed, mostly thanks to the encouragement I was given, to complete the last two of the “short” Thursday evening runs you’ve done from the Poachers.
First, a bit about myself. I was born during WW2 so I’m not as young as some of you are and I’ve lived with my family, on and off in the vicinity of Preston/Leyland, only since the 1970s. Also, in my working life, my work has always been pretty sedentary. Never taking part in sport, and not a lot of exercise.
I had my wake-up call on all this misspent time back in 2011 when I had to have one of my hips replaced. The NHS surgeon who did it, a really nice guy, told me I should either, “use it or lose it”. I took him at his word. The picture below shows me in our back garden with my crutches a week or so after my op. That’s when I started adding some serious walking to the gardening and the repairing/rebuilding old cars that have always been a lifelong interests for me.

So what else might be interesting about me? Well, from the days when I was a Chemistry teacher in the 1960s I became quite an expert on home made explosives, and although computers are something I used to know only a little about, I have worked for many years as a head of IT.  Also, a lot of my life has been spent in the Middle East so my knowledge of spoken and written Arabic used to be not that bad.  I suppose those things taken together, in this age we now live in, this might make me a bit of a liability!  And what else? Well, I’m also a writer of poetry and I also sing the baritone part in a few barbershop choruses.

Ok, back to running.  Until recently I hadn’t done any.  I even managed to avoid it when I was at school in the 1950s.  However, thanks to the surgeon who replaced my hip I did, as I say, take up walking and I now lead walks, a few times each month, for the Chorley and for the South Ribble ramblers.  Also, some time ago, I’ve got myself a road bike and I use that quite a lot, except that cycling in traffic scares the hell out of me.

My running came about when I read about the NHS’s “Couch to 5k”.  I thought to myself, well I’ve done the couch bit, now I just need to do the rest of it. For that, about a month or so back, I went to the 5k parkrun at Cuerden and I’ve now done that three times.  It was on one of those runs that the words “you should join Red Rose Runners” were whispered in my ear by someone I ran alongside. So since then the rest, as they say, is history.

Looking back on what I’ve just written, I’m hoping that from an aged anti-social reprobate like myself, this entry on your blog page is what’s needed from someone who’s new on the block.

Over these last two weeks, I’m pleased to say, I’ve been introduced to, welcomed and befriended by John (who shouts when we start off running) and Dave (who seems to run as a back-marker).  I now hope to get to meet and get to know more of you.