Long road out of Jurby

    LONG ROAD OUT OF EDEN JURBY – PART EIGHT   MY THANKS I wish to start my final blog for 2023 by thanking Jock Waddington for giving me the opportunity of sharing my experiences of the ‘P.W.’ from the last 25 years, touching on its history, my training progress and tips from other ‘veterans’. Also my gratitude to Ray Cox and his organising team for another superb event, and all the spectators/supporters around the course who ‘make’ the day for the competitors.   SATURDAY 24 th JUNE 2023 My Parish Walk day started with a bit of a panic when I missed the alarm and didn’t wake up until 6.38 a.m.! Fortunately, everything was laid out well in advance and I managed to get down to the start in good time. All went to plan to Rushen though the music blaring out at the Blackboards (The only way is up) gave a foretaste as to what was to come. I was trying to put in the minimum effort to each church to save energy for later, and boy did I need it! Turning at Rushen I actually

    LONG ROAD OUT OF EDEN – JURBY (PART SEVEN) Now the dust is settling (literally) from an exciting T.T. fortnight, it is time to turn our collective attentions to the ‘P. W.’, the event being now only 10 days distant. Training should be starting to taper off now, and personally I have one more six miles night walk and an eleven miles circuit of Maughold planned before the end of the weekend. A sortie up from Rushen to the Round Table and back last weekend brought up my mileage total so far to just over my planned 300 miles. However, this figure barely registers compared to some of the figures being recorded on Strava by those training solo like Paulo Atherton and Dean Morgan, or the regular group containing Richard Gerrard, James Quirk, David Walker, Josh Knights et al. This all points to a fascinating battle at the front of the field, which  looks to contain no less than eight of last year’s top ten (unless Liam Parker or Patrick Bregazzi turns out to be Raymond the Raven…).