PhotograPhHeatHcliffeo'Malley
38 n running free
L
auren lives down the road from me. A few months ago I
bumped into her in the street. She had one hand on her
hip and in the other she held a lead attached to a plump
brown and white spaniel which was gazing up at her from
where he sat on the pavement."Aw, is this your dog?" I
asked patting his curly back,"he's really cute.""Yeah, but lazy," she
replied,"he doesn't want to walk today." After much coaxing she
managed to get him on to his feet and the pair ambled off towards
the playing fields. I looked around a few steps later to see Lauren
once more looking on embarrassedly while he took another little
rest. She raised a hand and shrugged. I couldn't help but smile
after returning the wave. Lauren is tall, slim, pretty and intelligent,
with an American accent to complete the glam package.The
thought of her struggling to enthuse this big fuzzy dog into
putting one foot in front of the other every day seemed highly
comical. Little did I realise it wouldn't be long before I'd be
running alongside her for 13.1 miles in a half-marathon
inspired by `Gumbo'.
Dog on the StreetS
We're members of the same running club, Harrow-based Metros,
and we realised while chatting at one of the training sessions that
we were both signed up to the Royal Parks Half Marathon in
October. I had a press place and Lauren had a purpose � to raise
money for the Blue Cross.The Blue Cross is a charity promoting
animal welfare, they find homes for abandoned pets, provide
veterinary care when owners can't afford to pay, and campaign for
Running Free's Julia Buckley and Lauren Brown run thirteen miles past some of
London's most famous landmarks to toast a fuzzy dog.
royaL ParkS
haLf Marathon
WORdS BY Julia Buckley
responsible pet ownership. It turned out that Lauren and her
husband had taken Gumbo in from a rescue centre when they
lived in the US, he'd been found wandering the streets of Mexico
and for a while the animal centre had a thought he might be deaf �
until someone realised he answered to Spanish commands.
Nowadays he's bilingual and the survival skills he picked up on
the streets enable him to sniff out abandoned sandwiches from
several hundred yards. He's also the most friendly and loving
companion imaginable. He's lovely. So Lauren's reasons for
choosing to run for the Blue Cross were clear.
We were both aiming to finish at around the two hour mark so
we decided to run together, it was Lauren's first half-marathon and
she said she'd be glad of the company and I'd never run a race
with anyone else before soI thought it'd be nice to give it a go.
Neither of us regretted it.
race to the Start
An autumnal Sunday morning saw us arrive at London's Hyde Park.
We immediately joined one of the lengthy queues emanating like
the tentacles of a giant squid from the cluster of portaloos near the
start of the race. Lauren and I are both laid-back types and until
then we'd been pretty relaxed about the whole thing. A bit too
relaxed to tell you the truth. Neither of us had stuck to our training
schedules, we'd both been out partying on the Saturday night (till
3am in my case) and Lauren's fundraising had only got into gear
the night before with a mass email-out to friends and family.
Standing there amid a crowd of 10,000 fellow runners and
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