Running Hard by Chilton Steve;

Author:Chilton, Steve;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandstone Press Limited
Published: 2017-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

The opening event at Rusland on May Day . . . struck a note of ‘Carry on Kenny’ - as the defending Kenny Stuart of Threlkeld, Keswick, launched into the new season just as he had concluded the last one, in devastating form. Stuart won handily from last year’s championship third placer – and hopefully improving – Graham Moffat of Sedbergh.

As a pipe opener, Stuart had looked the part when winning a close-season cross country race at Oxton in the Scottish Borders, and, also suggested his adaptability to longer distances, by breaking the record – when an unofficial ‘guest’ – in the arduous twenty-two mile ‘Buttermere Round’ road race, which is normally an athletic club member exercise.

This event preceded Rusland, and a week after the May Day meeting, Kenny was flanked by athletic club members again in another ‘twenty-plus’ mile event, this time over the Lakeland mountains at Duddon Valley. Advisable familiarity with orienteering intricacies was the loophole for detaching this particular event from AAA dictatorship and one which enabled Kenny to officially contest a mountain marathon.

A modest map and compass user, but a more than accomplished fell runner, he made good use of the latter attribute to employ the proverbial fox and hounds tactic, before implementing his victory kill, in the final sprint for home, some two and three quarters hours later.

Proven then at long runs besides the traditional ‘straight up and down’ variety, Kenny was finally caught in the political cross-fire which currently shams (and shames) our ‘sport’, and the resultant deprivation for him, was to spend the next three and a half months at the heart of what may well have been his best ever form-displaying summer . . . in quarantine.

So much then for the muddled intent of the AAA! . . . the ‘Amateur Apartheid Association’ as one well-meaning wag aptly described them . . .

Kenny Stuart, who was finally allowed out of the ‘sin-bin’, and after picking up the threads, won the Blue Riband of AAA competition the Ben Nevis Race and also broke the record in the ‘amateurs’ concluding championship race – the ‘Blisco Dash’ at Langdale, where he finished ahead of that code’s overall champion, John Wild.

Ironically, Kenny also won the AAA governed race over the Grasmere Guides race course, which was originated ‘to show the guides up for what they are worth’.

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