I wanted to try and bring the age of the bloggers down a little this year or at least have one with youth on their side.
For that reason I asked 19 year old Adam Killip who is a friend of my son Ben. I thought that he would bring something different to the readers as there is no doubt his student friends will think that he is mad.
Is was more by chance that 21 year old Julia Furner was signed up. I had asked one or two older (I had better say slightly older in case they read this) women who had declined. It was Mark Hempsall who put me in touch with Julia - thanks Mark. Looking at the age profile of last year's finishers she will have some story to tell if she makes it to the finish.
Martijn was chosen for different reasons. He has made lots of friends on the Isle of Man and again he brings an outside perspective to our event. But I hadn't realised that, in twelfth place and aged 36, he was the highest finisher under the age of 40.
In fact there were only two under 40s in the top 20, Chris Cale in 20th being the other. I campaigned for several years against continuing a separate veterans category (and women's class) to Peel when most of the veterans wanted to go further and they made up the majority of the finishers. This fact reinforced that view although , to the credit of the organising committee, the change has long been made.
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5 comments:
Great website again, Murray.
My only comment is that if you hadn't e-mailed me and mentioned your blog, I wouldn't have realised it was there.
Michael
I knew it was there Murray - you can't hide anything from us blogphiles !!
I wanted to keep it lower profie than the walker's blogs which are the most important.
17 people have accessed it today.
By the way Dave, I was impressed that you were willing to give a lift to the guys stating at the Empress. It might have been different had they been at the Welbeck - they would have been walking both ways!
There must be something about hoteliers and reading blogs.
Here is a Peel to Douglas Walk question. What year did someone race walk from Douglas to Peel just in time to join the race which he won?
There is method in my madness - as well as picking the 3 guys up from the Empress, I am also on a joint marketing venture for the Ascot & Welbeck Hotels !
Good question that Murray ...you are not on about Peter Kaneen winning two in the same year are you as the race in December 2006 was cancelled and took place in January ?If not, I am not sure if he ever won a Peel to Douglas but will take a stab at Steve Taylor purely because he once told me he used to walk to the start of races to get warmed up.
I hate to say it but it was me in 1982. I had been persuaded to use the winter as an endurance base (I had a dream of making the 1984 Olympics) rather than worrying about local races and I fully expected to make up the numbers. I was pretty stiff after also doing 24 miles the previous day but I think I passed John Cannell at around Union Mills and took a minute out of him to the finish. I won in 1.20.46 was was almost 6 minutes slower than the previous year.
Poor John never won a Peel to Douglas. Somehow I have the opposite record as I was never beaten in the Peel to Douglas.
Even the great Steve Partington was beaten once and has a dnf to his name. Steve has won 13 times.
The only time he was beaten was in 1983 when he got the first dose of the Robert Heffernans whilst battling it out with Allan Callow (winner) and Andy Garrett (2nd).
Now to answer Martijn's question.
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