Crikey, I just thought that I’d managed to miss a day of Juneathon. I remember running every day, but my last blog was titled Day 7. Today is Day 9. What happened to Day 8? Turns out (and thank you for not noticing this) I titled Day 7 as Day 77 (with the subtitle of Bleary, so that’s my ready-made excuse) and Day 8 as Day 7. Idiot.

Today is Thursday and Thursday is social running day. We spurned the canal in favour of one of the local country parks, conveniently forgetting that the word ‘Valley’ in its name is a clue to its geography. Off we trotted, dealing with the usual work, relationship and life issues on the way. The sun was shining, the dog walkers friendly and I was going about 3min/mile slower than I did when I was racing my Garmin training partner of mystery. The annoying thing was that it felt nearly as hard as going at  my usual pace, it seemed most unfair.

We did 3 miles and then lurked in the car park while we continued to set the world to rights and I stared at a chap in a pair of tiny running shorts. He had lovely long lady-like legs and I found myself mulling on the unfairness of this, as well trying to imagine what he would look like with my sturdy man thighs (he’d be shorter and would look ridiculous in tiny running shorts, which would serve him right for nicking my legs).

I have also reached the momentous decision to name my Garmin. I talk to him (ooh, it’s a boy!)  enough as it is, usually muttering something along the lines of “Am I indoors now? Does this look like indoors? See, there’s a bloody canal there, do I have one of those in my house? No. I. Am. Outdoors”. Thank you for all your ideas so far; Ginge has suggested Jonathan (as a play on Jan/Juneathon) and Simon (because I’ll have to do what Simon says), they’re good suggestions, but he was also just naming two of my cousins and that’s a bit weird (incidentally, you have no idea how much attention I had to pay while writing a card to Jonathan in January – it took all my concentration not to write “To Janathon”).

Anyway – this weekend’s canal running takes us to the shiny metropolis that is Wigan. Land of pies, piers and the regional delicacy that is the Uncle Joe’s Mint Ball. Immortalised in song by Mike Harding, this spherical sweetie is a thing of beauty and the waft of peppermint oil on the breeze near Wigan Wallgate is a sensory experience that is rarely beaten.

I am willing to offer a tin of Uncle Joe’s (with none missing, I promise) to one lucky blog reader who comes up with the best name for what is usually known as That Bloody Thing – just add a comment at the bottom of this and that’s it. In the interests of ethics, I’ll follow JogBlog‘s lead and there will be some kind of independent adjudication involved.