'Twas a cold wet snowy hail stone morning when my iphone
bleeped to say there was a message. It was Evonne, stating that she thought The Cloud 9 hill run we had set for today was going to be too dangerous. “MMMM” I
thought, I had still arranged to meet the two Chris’s so thought I had better
turn up anyway. At that point another text from Christiana telling me that
perhaps we should stick to Moston and about four miles today. "No problem" I thought,
slightly disappointed. Anyhow, we soon all arrived at the club with Chris
(that’s male Chris) turning up dressed for mountain climbing. It seemed a shame
to spoil it for him and as soon as Chris (that’s female Chris) suggested we may
give it a try, we were all in my car and on the way to Congleton.
Parked up at the leisure centre we took the short walk
across to the Biddulph rail trail. As we started off we said goodbye to the alcoholic
teenagers drinking strong beer at 9-30 am and skiving off school and set on our
way. We soon left the track and that is where the fun began, or should I say
the mud began. Sliding around like Bambi in an old musical I had Evonne’s it's
too dangerous words running through my head!!! Then as if by magic, we were
treated to the most amazing hail storm I've seen since err... the last most amazing
hail storm. With hail bouncing off my balding head and Chris saying “ I cant
see The Cloud yet” we began the ascent through the fields and there it was “The
Cloud”.
I have done The Cloud 9 race twice over the years so sort of
knew the way, although I wouldn’t fancy it under torch light, so I sort of knew
what to expect and it didn’t disappoint me. As the going got tough and the path
narrowed we took a few breathers to keep safe more than anything else (that’s
my story and I'm sticking to it) but soon blasted through the miles to the top.
When arriving at the summit, I couldn’t stop thinking how
beautiful it was. One side you could see nothing because of the fog, on the
other you could see a 1000 different colors and see for ever.
When coming down we just went for it, bit by bit rock by
rock and tree root by tree root until eventually it flattened out a bit. In
total we covered just about 6 miles, shaving some off the actual 9 mile Cloud 9
run. It was a good little training run though and I look real forward to the
real thing in a couple of months.
So Im entered and so is Chris, and hopefully will see a few
more of our club there when the day comes.
For more information visit the Cloud 8 website.
Paul
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