A MAN who cared for his wife for 15 years after she suffered two strokes has rediscovered his love of race walking and will represent Great Britain in Spain.
Mick Barker is 79 but back to levels of fitness that would put some in their 20s to shame.
He will compete in the European Masters Athletics Championships in Alicante on May 18.
He has been a race walker since his teens and has won many races, including the 12-mile Sheffield Star Walk in 1964. His time was 98 minutes and 15 seconds - a record which still stands today.
Mick, a former railway engineer, walked for Sheffield United Harriers (walking section), but gave it up in 1971 to open Barker’s Fruit and Veg shop on Barnsley Road in Cudworth with his wife Marlene. He’s had various other jobs since, but never forgot about his love of race walking.
During a spell in hospital in the late 90s, Mick joined a jogging club for patients and went on to join Barnsley AC.
He competed in races, championships and the London Marathon but gave it up to care for Marlene who suffered two strokes.
“She was in and out of hospital, in and out of care homes and then she decided she wanted to come home for me to look after her. In the early 2000s she became really poorly and I stopped running not long after 2004.
“I did everything. I did all the washing, eating, tablets; she had lots of medication. She couldn’t communicate and was bed-bound for many years.
“It was very difficult, but I had done it for years.”
The couple moved to Lavender Court in Kendray, where Mick still lives, in 2007 and Marlene died in 2015 aged 73. A few weeks later, he was back out walking.
He said: “I had no intention of doing what I’m doing now. After Marlene died, I didn’t want to get locked down in to sitting and talking about aches and pains and medication. I wanted to be fit and healthy. So about four or five weeks after she died, I started going for little walks. About eighteen months ago I started to push it, 16 months ago I was getting pretty fit - I’m fitter than some people in their 20s - and I wanted to do the times I was doing when I was younger.”
But he’s been in hospital twice since Christmas - the first time he developed hypothermia while out walking, and the second was a few weeks ago when he tripped on a flagstone. He didn’t break any bones, but has suffered ligament damage.
“I’m feeling a bit down about it. It’s 10km, and I will be competing against Olympic champions, former Olympic champions world champions and ex world champions.
“Marlene was lovely, a really friendly person. She didn’t have an enemy in the world and everyone liked her. She would be delighted that I have taken it up again. She knew how much I loved it.”
Mick is also entering a 10km in Oxford in June and a 5km in the British Masters Championships in which he will represent his team, Northern Masters AC.
If both races go well, he will enter the World Masters Championships in Malaga in September.
