Extra thanks for Graham

I've reported on the www.manxathletics.com site how former Parish Walk record holder Graham Young retires today after 48 years as a postal worker.

I can't say that I have agreed with Graham over every matter we have discussed (who can?) and in my younger days I was particularly stubborn and wasn't going to be told by anyone what I should do. Despite Graham's own under age entry in the Parish Walk he thought that I was ill advised to be walking such long distances so young.

But once I had made up my mind he always helped me -if you call it helping to cut open the blisters on my heels with a pair of scissors at Bride! That was in 1976 when I finished the course for the first time aged 19. I think I have always given him credit for that.

It was only when searching through my old photos last night that I reflected upon how helpful he had been two years later when I won the event (I didn't enter in 1977). The photo above is of Graham and myself (double click it to enlarge) on the Oatlands Road and we chatted away to Peel where I think he was persuaded to go a bit further so long as my dad supplied a pint of shandy.

Without his steadying influence, the following year I wrecked my race by going much too fast from the Sloc onwards and it was only really last night the thought crossed my mind that maybe I would have made that mistake a year earlier without Graham. The only part of the race I walked badly was an hour or two after Graham stopped and I caught John Cannell by upping the pace too much.

The caption for the photo was never complete and now it is out of date. My father wrote on the cover of the original slide "Murray and postman".