Thoughts and happenings from a life on Malta

No more catamaran rides to Sicily or weekend flights for a spot of mountain running. This hilly island has its altitude training possibilities too and they’re only a few bus stops away from where I live. Mount Etna here I come!

This morning I did what so many other fellow runners must have done – I dedicated my training session to John Walsh. The run along the Mizieb paths was no longer, no harder, no faster than a standard Sunday one but it felt appropriate that as step followed step, my memories of John kept up with the cadence.

I cannot claim to have had a close relationship with him but the melancholy that hit me when I heard the news of his demise yesterday is with me still – I could neither sweat it out of my system nor kick it off on the dusty trail. In the decades that I’ve been active in athletics, our paths crossed on more than one occasion and, four years ago, he was there to give me useful advice in connection with a challenge I had intended tackling. That training schedule, together with his comments, is still stuck to my notice-board, a relevant focal point whenever I decide to undertake a new athletic venture. In more recent years, living in the same street, we sometimes small-talked outside his garage while on many mornings I’d even hear his motorbike throttling to life, signalling it was high time that I, too, headed for work.

My condolences go to his wife Carol and all those who feel his loss.