It has been observed that some of my treasure hunting has been a little too, shall we say, lateral in its approach. In response to this, may I present what is probably the most literal piece of treasure I will find.
A red door (as suggested by Follystone).
Oh and I did a token 1.5 miles because it’s Friday night and I wanted my tea.
The Lancashire coastline is punctuated by piers; Southport, Lytham St Annes, three at Blackpool… I’ve run past two of them (maybe I need to venture to St Annes for a race one day) and any one of them would have made for a jolly Juneathon day out. That’s not my style though.
I ran after work today. Literally. Changed in the ladies and then a sprint downstairs before any of my colleagues spotted me in Lycra and wicking fabric. It’s not that I’m bothered by what I look like (heck, the other shoppers at my local Tesco will testify to that), more that I can’t always be doing with the bewilderment and questions. Maybe it’s a female thing, but any mention of exercise is often met with huffing and puffing, talk of grudging trips to the gym or a complete lack of exercise being worn almost as a badge of honour. I know I sometimes moan a bit about going for a run and I do love the sofa and the knitting and all the lovely indoors things, but I also bloody love my running. You are all welcome to remind of this point in the future when I’m whinging about going out.
So I don’t really admit to running at work. Especially if I’m in a spell where I’m doing longer distances – I can imagine the conversations; “So what did you do this weekend?” “Um, well I ran 10 miles in the pissing rain” “Oh”. If you met me at work you wouldn’t guess that I run (sod it, if you met me at a race you might not guess that I run) so I keep schtum.
Anyway, I got out of the building only to be spotted by one of our managers who cycles. He looked somewhat perplexed that I was standing at the side of the road swearing at Miles (“It’s a bit of cloud cover, not a steel vault you git, get a bloody signal and don’t you dare ask if I’m indoors”). He wanders around the office in cycling shorts though, so I’m not too bothered about that.
When Miles decided to play ball, I sped off down the road, down onto the canal and down to Wigan Pier. It’s not a pier where you’ll get an ice cream or try to win a mildly deformed teddy bear with a crane, in fact it’s not much of a pier at all* (and probably isn’t what Morning of Magicians had in mind when he added it to the list). But it did make a nice three mile loop and if it’s good enough for George Orwell, it’s good enough for me.
I bet George would be well chuffed to have a pub named after him
We actually ran to Wigan Pier as part of last year’s canal running/Juneathon crossover – it was mostly raining and drowned my camera.
*the pier was actually a coal tippler where coal was transferred from tram to barge. I think that’s the kind of joke we had to make do with up north while the Industrial Revolution was on.
After the ups and downs of the Badger 10k I decided that I need to do some hill training. Admittedly I had the same thought after the Bolton 10k. And the Folkestone half. And the Pennington Flash Parkrun. And in fact I have this thought any time that I am faced with anything steeper than say, the Norfolk Broads. This rarely turns into actual hill training though. I say rarely, what I actually mean is never.
Badger 10k elevation – it felt worse than this looks. Especially at the end.
This time I stalled for as long as I could (by reading Everything You Need to Know About Hill Training) but realised that thinking had to turn into doing at some point. Even though I could have already ticked @torsparkle’s suggestion of hill off my treasure list, I’ve been saving it in the knowledge that I will have to do some early morning runs and these would be made easier with some convenient treasure.
Luckily we’re spoilt for choice with hills round here. I had a gentle pootle down to one of my nemesis hills (there has just been the once where I’ve managed to run the whole way up it) and did a set of five 30 second repeats up the hill, aiming at around my 5k race pace as fast as my little legs could carry me. I might have done more, but my early morning insides hadn’t got the memo and a run/walk home was called for…
I’m not quite sure where to go from here, either increasing the number of reps that I do or the length of each interval, especially as this article suggests that a short, sharp 10 second burst can be really effective in improving strength and speed (incidentially, The Guardian recently reported how High-intensity Interval Training helps all sorts of people, but we take that sort of article with a pinch of salt don’t we?). In the meantime, I shall go to yoga, work on my core strength and emerge with a bikini body – results not actually guaranteed.
We had high hopes for tonight’s expedition – a canal run along a stretch where we had previously spotted both a goat and an exotic animal (in the form of a wallaby). There’s every chance that we were previously mistaken about the wallaby, but whatever it was, it was certainly bigger than a squirrel.
Unfortunately, the wallaby was no more and there were no goats to be seen either. I’m slightly miffed by this as it seems like every man and his dog had a goat last year, but now we are goatless. Someone has indeed got my goat.
However, all was not lost and we did see a bit of traditional canal art in the form of roses and castles (another suggestion from the prolific Morning of Magicians).
King of the castle
We also say a conifer that looked a bit like a molar – does this count as an interesting tree @torsparkles?
It looks like more like a tooth in real life. Maybe you had to be there.
For the return leg, we ventured off the towpath and onto the main road where eagle eyed Ginge (I might start calling him that all of the time) spotted an orchid (although I am still hoping to see a real one on my travels Jo!)
An unexpected orchid
Tomorrow night is yoga night, so it’s an early hunt in the morning – unless downward facing cat will count as treasure?
Seeing as we’re over a third of the way in now, here’s an updated list of what’s been spotted:
Travelling Hopefully 