Great North Run: Memories

Some memories to hold of the great north run:

• Members of the public offering out random foodstuffs.
• The children offering their hands for Hi-5s
• The quasi-football chants echoing through the concrete underpasses in Newcastle
• The changing landscape: Urban to industrial estate to retail park to suburban to high street to beach
• Having someone step on my shoe, pulling it off, as we were walking to the start
• The costumed, overheating after 2 miles, walking with costumes unzipped.
• A red arrow skimming the sea. I missed the main displays, starting too far back to see anything past the initial flyover and finishing too late to see anything but the last elements of the final display.
• As someone near me said "the restful pitter-patter, like raindrops" as our footsteps echoed back from the city buildings
• Hunting, like the guy behind me and the girl in front, through the goodie bag unsure of where the medal was. I was sure it was in there somewhere, they weren't sure at all.
• Scenes identical to Monty Python's Marathon for the Incontinent throughout.
• Being startled by the number of Steel Bands there are on Tyneside
• Sprinting from the final turn to the finish (as I couldn't see it from then), and then having to go back over the finish line to recover my baseball cap (which served very well to keep the sunshine out of my eyes at 2 miles and then kept the torrential rain out of my eyes at 7 miles), as it had blown off.

Whilst the BBC highlights programme (that we only just made it back for) focused heavilly on the elite races and two charity causes, the great north run isn't about a race. It's about 40,000 odd races. Each of us, running their individual race for their individual reasons. In the pens at the start they took a break from the psyching-you-up-for-a-race music to play a very decent version of Abide with me, for everyone to take a few moments to remember their reasons. For the rest of us, most of them were clearly written on their rear-number-plates.

I did get a bit sick of the theme to Local Hero, mind.

Above all, the event brought to mind when Diana's body was driven north after her funeral, and everyone was throwing flowers onto the car. I'd never seen that done before, but it came natural for so many people to do that together.