Manchester III

Remember, with each new issue my previous issue unlocks. Thanks again to my paid subscribers who get early access and support my running career!

I’m flying to Poland tomorrow for a race and I’m looking forward to giving you all a health and racing update. I have a fast time in these gams, I can feel it! For now, please enjoy this collection of cursed photos from my glamorous life as a professional athlete.

The Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku is held in a stadium surrounded by granite outcrops. It’s gorgeous and unique to find different sporting grounds like throwing cages, a soccer pitch, beach volleyball courts, and frisbee golf scattered among the mixed levels and terrain. The meet’s warm-up area is seemingly carved into the cliff face. I love how this temporary fencing is practically useless. The cliff already prevents access, while doubling as a wonderful vantage point for ticketless scabs.

M11 Track Club officially launched one year ago. This cake was made by a boy who went to Keely’s primary school who won the British Junior Bake Off. Famous alumni! The cake was gigantic and made with “healthy” ingredients for athletes, like oats and seeds. It tasted delicious even if the texture was bizarre.

Nathan’s favourite book shop in Manchester is in a small high-ceilinged room up a staircase in the Northern Quarter. The sales assistant is a sickly looking young man who sits on a green velvet couch amid several open books, writing notes on unlined printer paper. He doesn’t acknowledge you when you walk in, never makes eye contact, and in fact, shows no sign that he works there at all. For an eccentric book shop, the vibes are immaculate. When we left the store, Nathan, having purchased a biography of a Lebanese poet and an account of the bubonic plague in 17th-century London, described the man’s position as his “dream job”.

Before my flight to a race in Hengelo this June, I was wiping the kitchen counter and caught my finger on a shard of ceramic bowl that had chipped off a few days earlier. I felt a tingly shock of pain run up and down my finger before blood started pouring out. It was 9 am and I needed to leave for my flight in about 20 minutes. I panicked and called Nathan to ask for help even though he was still in Melbourne. He asked ChatGPT for me and I wrapped my finger in a paper towel and bound it with sticky tape.

After some research on hand anatomy I later realised I had sliced through a nerve because I couldn’t feel things properly on the outside edge of my pinky finger. I then began to contact everyone I’d ever met to tell them about my strange injury. It’s been two months now and the feeling still hasn’t returned. Oops!

Sunday is my rest day so I try and immerse myself in British culture while I have the opportunity, like the Romily Young Farmers Fair. Farmers and locals showed off their wares: sheep, cows, tractors, baked goods, flower arrangements in gumboots, vintage cars, and for some reason giant tortoises and owls. This man sat stoically watching over his owl wards chained to their podiums. If any child tried to reach their hand over the orange mesh fence, the man would suddenly animate and shout at them. I feel mixed emotions about this situation. The man clearly loves these birds, you can see he’s even wearing a shirt with an owl on it, but the anaesthetized expressions and tiny bird ankle cuffs made me uncomfortable.

This is a portrait of Trevor Painter, revered coach of multiple Olympic medalists, taken by UPS as he accepted a package of Nike Vaporfly shoes for me at his house in Wigan. My favourite things about this photo is the excellent framing, his shorts, bare feet, and the shadow outline of the delivery person.

My modes of transport are this bike, trains, and carpooling with Keely. On these trips I try to offer her questionable relationship advice while we’re speeding through traffic and running at least 20 minutes late for training. Once she was complaining about someone being a millennial and their cringe habits, and I tactfully avoided bringing up that I too was also technically a millennial. Sometimes in this group I feel like a chameleon or spy, using my racially ambiguous face, accent, and teenage boy fashion sense to blend into my surroundings.

The rest of the time I ride around town with my £10 wireless earbuds from TK Maxx listening to the Neurotic News backlog and subjecting my friends to the worst audio quality phone conversations they’ve ever had. I miss my e-bike. They don’t seem to be as common here as they are in Melbourne. Trains in the UK are also criminally expensive, impossible to fare evade, and an example of how far the British empire has fallen.

xoxo Trina