Month: June 2011

Juneathon Day 10: Mostly uneventful

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Now that’s a title to get people flocking to your blog, but I’m nothing if not honest. Up and out before six and the only people I passed were  a couple of dog walkers, one with several collies – I was grateful that he delayed crossing the road, thus thwarting the plans of one of them who definitely looked like he wanted to herd me.

I seem to have entered a slightly dysfunctional stage with my Garmin, today I pretty much ignored him and did a steadyish three miles, nothing fancy. I’m liking the suggestions so far, although Fortnight Flo has managed to suggest my uncle’s name (the father of Simon and Jonathan) and possibly that would be just as unnerving as Ginge’s ideas. Maybe I could go all Rumpelstiltskin and offer a special bonus prize to anyone who guesses my aunt’s name? Not you Mum, that’s cheating.

 

Juneathon Day 9: Name my Garmin, win sweeties

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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.

Give one to your granny and watch the bugger go

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.

 

 

Juneathon day 8: I need putting in a bag and shaking

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Ginge marvels at my ability to wake up in a foul mood. Nothing actually happens in those brief moments between dreaming and waking, but somehow the clouds have rolled in and everything is a bit grey and bleak. There’s always a temptation to let it swallow me up (inevitably leading to more clouds later on, when I turn this into another stick to beat myself with) rather than kick myself up the bum and shout “RAAAAHHHH!” at it. This morning was one of those mornings. I forgot to set my alarm, but still woke up at half five – rather than cheer the fact that I’d woken up in plenty of time, I uttered the words “sod Juneathon” (or words to that effect…). Half an hour later, I still hadn’t shifted and was skirting dangerously close to letting myself passively fail by ‘running out of time’.

Five minutes after that, I was dressed (albeit with my running tights on inside out, but I looked fairly respectable) and being hustled out of the door to go and do my Audiofuel intervals. The cloud lurked for about three minutes before I started to feel better. I belted out my fast bits quicker than last week (my training conversation with Ginge last night went: Ginge “the key to sprinting is using your arms – pump your arms and your legs will go faster”, Me “yes, but I’ll look like a tit….”) and ignored the cloud creeping back in when I nearly decided that having a short walk as part of one of my recoveries was a sign of my abject failure.

Who knows what set me off this morning. It could be that I’ve got some work worries in the back of my mind, it could be something abstract that hasn’t occurred to me yet, it could just have been that I was really hungry when I woke up….

I really can’t be doing with my head sometimes.

Today was exactly half way between a 99 or 2 cornets – maybe a 99 with sauce and sprinkles.

Juneathon day 7: Bleary

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Tuesday night is the night that Ginge and I tend to run together. Today we had planned to meet up after work so that we could fill in some of my missing canal running around Wigan. Then we thought about it for a bit and decided that it would be so much better to have a night that involves no jogging, blogging or logging, but does involve watching Saturday’s Dr Who and drinking copious amounts of tea.

Annoyingly, my pre-alarm call Juneathon-panic waking up happened at the record time of 2.50 something this morning, which combined with the fact that I’d had trouble getting to sleep, meant that when the real alarm went off at half five, I could swear that someone had glued my eyelids shut overnight.

Eyes prised open, appropriate kit located, water drunk, out I go looking more than a bit startled – a mere 10 hours and three minutes since I had set off on my last Juneathon run. After doing a long run on Sunday and a fast run yesterday, I decided that today should be a rest day and I would just do two miles. Normally, when I have to do a short run, I try to do something useful with it (intervals, hills, just belting through) but today that idea was dismissed as nonsense. Instead, I chose to run a shortened version of a standard there and back, with the added excitement of doing it backwards in part (the route, not my running style – that would definitely have ended in tears) with the result that briefly I became trapped in a cul-de-sac because it all looked different from the other direction. The Garmin was checked for only distance, not pace and I was home to see a rainbow arching across the dark grey clouds before the rain came splatting down.

Juneathon Day 6: Blimey Charlie!

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Garmin, check. Shuffle, check. Clubcard, check. Monday night is big shop night in the Hopefully household and earlier Athons have taught me that the most effective use of time is to run home from Tesco (well I’m hardly going to get up at half five on a Monday morning am I?). I have long since run out of shame when it comes to going to supermarkets in my running kit (at least tonight I was there pre-run so I wasn’t red-faced, sweaty or muddy, which is a blessing for everyone) and I think more people (me included) were distracted by the sight of a woman who appeared to be wearing a pelmet as a skirt.

To get home, I have a choice of two routes. Both are three miles long. One is an undulating bypass between an industrial estate and a housing estate finishing with my old nemesis hill. The other is mainly flat and runs between fields full of sheep. Guess which one I picked? I know, I know, but don’t judge me just yet…

Yesterday on Twitter, JogBlog was extolling the virtues of owning a Garmin to Hels and the conversation turned to the fact that some let you run against a virtual training buddy (JogBlog’s is named Cedric). This lead to some discussion about training plans which reminded me that I should really get on with some proper training if I’m supposed to be running the Folkestone half in September and Cathy suggested I use a virtual partner. Instead, I used my actual partner (the ever reliable Ginge) to kick my arse as we ran along the canal – the result was that I managed to finish with an average pace of 10.03min/mile over 8 miles (the last 2 half mile splits came in at 9.35 and 9.24 – I have no idea how) and I never do that.

Ginge presented me with undeniable evidence that it’s my head that’s holding me back  from improving at the moment – when he told me that he’d deliberately gone a bit faster than normal, I checked my pace, fear set in and I immediately slowed down.

Unfortuately (and fortunately, I’m not an idiot) now that this particular Pandora’s box has been opened, the fact that I can go faster is fluttering out there like a malevolent moth. I can’t really keep slacking by running at my familiar pace, however comforting that is. And so it was with some trepidation that I pressed buttons randomly on my Garmin until I had managed to challenge it to a race at a 9.30min/mile pace all the way home from Tesco. The result?

It was a bit of a drubbing for the Garmin – I beat it with a minute to spare. Ha. Take that as-yet-unamed-GPS-watch-thingy.

Annoyingly, this doesn’t really affect my cornet count and I now have a higher benchmark than I expected. Arse.