And her voice is sore from shouting, cheering winners who are losing, and she worries if their days are few and soon they'll have to go…

On the Friday night it was Penny Lane’s end of season bash and I managed to pick a few gongs for my performances. It was first bash I’d been to as they’re usually held the last weekend of November that clashed with my wife’s birthday. To the chargin of Paul Riley, PLS re-vamped the season to bring it in line with UKA. So instead of running from November 1st to October 31st it now runs 1st April to 31st March.

Now Paul had turned 40 a few months before me and I think I’m safe in saying, he was a ‘shoe in’ to sweep the v40 section gongs but with the season change, I now qualified earlier than expected to deny the poor lad at least a season of v40 glory! I didn’t win all the v40 prizes, because of PLS points scoring system, although I had more points than any vet in the multi terrain, because I’d finished 1st in 4 and 2nd in 1 event, these counted as an ‘open’ score so I got the runner up to Simo in the open category. I’m not fussed, it kept the competition interesting and gave the other vets something to go for.

The cross country was another story, I knew I’d be likely to get the v40 prize because as long as James, Martin and Neil Kelly turned up, I wasn’t getting in the top 2! I finished 3rd for PLS at Clarkes but that’s a quick dry course, the others I was luckily to be in the scoring with some predictably shiote performances! So, to sum it up I won the 5k, 5m, 10k, 10m, ½ marathon and marathon v40 gong for the road, the xc v40 and multi terrain challenge runner up, the xc captain Frank Martin said he couldn’t believe I was over 40 and Pam announced me as Jane Connolly, on top of that the DJ, an ex priest with a taste for the bizarre, kept calling me Davey Jones from the Monkees, so a good night all round!

Other highlights of the evening were the kaeroke bandits cranking out some busting tunes, Keith ‘moves like Jagger’ Boyle was my winner for the evening, bringing the APH basement to an Altamont style frenzy with his Sympathy For The Devil rendition…wooo wooo! I was in work the following day so stuck to shandies, not sure what time the rest of the gang stayed on till but I was tucked up in bed before 12, Cinders style.

Had a decent week of training with my first track session since the VLM my first run over 10 miles too. I was nearly electrocuted whilst out on our Friday XC, we ended up boxed into a polo field which had an electric fence to prevent the little pony’s making a break for freedom.