Month: June 2012

Juneathon 11/30 – in the pink

3 Comments

It’s fair to say that with a third of Juneathon done and dusted, the treasure hunting is starting to take over my brain a little bit. Tonight I contemplated running a particular route because I had passed a squashed pigeon in the middle of the road. This is not good. Incidentially, if and when I do spot some roadkill, am I expected to photograph it? I don’t want to offend the squeamish and equally, I’m not sure I want to be the sort of person who takes photos of squished wildlife.

Tonight was a simple two miles (I would’ve done a bit longer, but my tea was sitting heavy) taking in a pink car (suggested by runorgocrazy) that we had clocked earlier in the evening.

It’s not quite Lady Penelope, but never mind.

I am very pleased to have ticked this off because I was being tormented by a Barbie pink Fiat 500. I keep passing one on the road while I’m out driving, but never see it while I’m out running. If I do see it while I’m treasure hunting I will take a photo of it because it is about as pink as you can get, but at least now I can dampen down my persecutory ideas that the driving has been taunting me on purpose…

Juneathon 10/30: A walk in the park

3 Comments

Today’s run was supposed to be straightforward; I would join Ginge in the gym for a bit and then run home. I got to the gym and it dawned on me that I’ve neglected the gym a bit during Juneathon. I enjoy doing my weights at the gym but can’t get past either the tedium of cardio equipment or the rubbishness of the telly that’s on.

Anyway, at the gym I managed to climb 39 steps (the first of Follystone‘s suggestions that crop up today)…

I can also offer blurry photos of 38 and 40 steps if anyone’s interested

…and did a bit on the cross trainer before I got restless. Sometimes I keep myself entertained by swearing at the adverts. No matter what channel is on, they’re always a variation of payday loans, Uniform Dating (do you fancy people who have to wear a designated outfit and a name badge?) and the Veet one with the girl who’s inordinately proud that she no longer gives herself third degree burns whilst waxing her legs. Sadly the EDF energy advert wasn’t on, which deprived me both of something orange and the opportunity to mutter darkly at what is essentially a jovial orange poo with backing dancers.

It’s called Zingy apparently

After a while I think I must have been annoying Ginge because he suggested the grand idea of me running round town looking for treasure (yes mum, there was shades of this being ‘a good job for me’).

Off I trotted, optimistically seeking a half eaten Greggs or someone’s dropped treasure, but unfortunately the locals are too frugal to waste pastry or spare change. I made my way up to the park, getting some slightly odd looks as I darted from tree to tree looking for one from my list. I didn’t quite find Jo’s a tree with someone’s name carved in, but this one did have a declaration of love so I think that counts.

Today I shall be mad woman taking photos of trees

I headed up to the lake to see if I could spy some baby swans, only to get into a conversation with a couple who were looking for exactly the same thing. Apparently, the swans have been on the nest constantly for the last week, but today both were off it and yet there was no sign of any cygnets. The nesting island was covered in ducks and gulls, which is a bit odd if there were eggs or babies on there. I am awaiting updates.

Swan: may or may not have been a neglectful parent

Even though there were no baby swans, there was this chap who, with his waterside hangout, certainly looked like a dignified pigeon (and his feet weren’t deformed or nothing). If you want to see the very definition of a dignified pigeon have a look at Deadly Knitshade, yarn bomber extraordinaire and keeper of both Cooey the Pigeon and Plarchie the Giant Squid. Her book (Stitch London) is bloody awesome.

I am a pigeon. This is my lake.

After all the socialising and pigeon paparazzi, I thought I better head back to Ginge whose eagle eyes had spotted a blue fence (another of Follystone‘s) at the railway station.

I’ve spent ages defining what is a fence and what are railings. This is most definitely a fence.

Gym graced with my presence, three miles run, four treasures spotted, not bad for a Sunday.

Juneathon 9/30 – cutting it fine

10 Comments

Today I played chicken with Juneathon.

My original intention had been to get up early and try to spot a Parkrun t-shirt at Pennington Flash Parkrun. Unfortunately, I overslept. I then realised that I didn’t actually want to do a morning run despite that fact that I was due to have my hair cut at 12. This might be a girl thing, but if I’m having my hair done I don’t like to do anything to mess it up afterwards – I just enjoy basking in the all too brief hours where it has been blow dried by someone who knows what they’re doing. Unfortunately, last time my hair had been cut, I had to have a little cry afterwards and I was absolutely petrified about this appointment (my hair has just about grown out to the length that I wanted two months ago. And my hair grows fast). Anyway, I figured that if it was just as traumatic, I could always go for a run afterwards and see if that helped.

As it was, my hair turned out exactly how I wanted to and I celebrated by buying a new frock and some soup. You’ll notice how none of this counts for Juneathon. I went home, I ate my soup, I mixed up some chocolate and black treacle biscuits from Marian Keyes’ book Saved By Cake, I realised that leaving the page covered in splatters of biscuit mix is bad form when it’s a library book (you can tell all of my favourite recipes by the fact that the pages are like a Jackson Pollock rendered in butter, sugar and flour), I ate the mixture off the spatula more times than I should have done, I did many things. None of which were Juneathon.

One of our local pubs is having it’s annual folk festival this weekend (the weather is always rubbish this weekend, it’s as if god doesn’t like banjos) and I do enjoy embracing my inner folky. Conveniently the pub is bob on a mile away from our house (I know where the half mile markers are located in all directions from our front door) so we pootled up, listened to a nice bit of folky bluegrass and enjoyed a few pints of Hobgoblin (Ginge) and Marston’s Pedigree Diamond (me). Sadly these aren’t local ales for us (they’ll be local to someone though) otherwise I’d be able to tick that one off the list.

Special drinking beer outside gloves – to be blogged about at a later point

There had still been no Juneathon action at this point. I had however made preparations; Miles was in my bag, I was clad in appropriate foundation garments and I was the height of sartorial elegance by wearing running shoes to the pub. Keeping an eye on the clock like Cinderella at the ball, I was playing Juneathon chicken right up to the wire. I wasn’t helped by my last minute nip to the loo being held up by the woman in front of me seemingly having a bladder the size of a zeppelin.

If you look closely, Miles says 23:41

Despite this, I made it – a one mile run (in a surprisingly decent time, all things considered) from the pub (suggested by the Queen of the Athons herself) arriving home with 3 minutes to spare.

Juneathon 8/30 – Giving Ernie a run for his money

9 Comments

After yesterday’s exertions, the last thing that I wanted to do on a wet Friday night to go for a run. Especially with the prospect of a chippy tea in the offing. A token mile was agreed and out came the treasure list for perusal. I tried to tempt Ginge’s nemesis (a big fat fluffy black and white beast that poos in the potato patch) to hang around so that I could tick cat off the list, but to no avail.

Our eyes fell on another of Rachel’s suggestions (that’s Rachel of legendary Lego tableaux fame) – run an errand. We needed some milk. I would run for milk.

There are milk selling shops within view of our house, but I felt that even if I ran 10 miles, running mere feet with my shopping wouldn’t be in the spirit of the treasure list. We debated the morals of this for some time until Ginge declared that if I didn’t get a move on then I wouldn’t get any tea; this wasn’t a veiled threat, just the fact that the chippy would be shut…

Anyway, there’s a Spar half a mile down the road, so on the 8th day of Juneathon I ran a mile loop, for half of which I was accompanied by two pints of semi-skimmed.

Milky milky

Juneathon 7/30 – How green is my valley? Or, face the fear and do it anyway

18 Comments

Regular readers will know that I have only just come around to the idea of racing – I am mainly motivated by race bling, having an excuse to run in new places and what may prove to be an eternal struggle to get my time under 60 minutes. Tonight though there no reward for the finishers, I was running locally and had the knowledge that with hills, stiles and kissing gates, I would inevitably run a rubbish time. Tonight, I was motivated only by treasure. I was so motivated by treasure that I forced myself to ignore the nagging feeling that there was a very good chance that I would finish last. This isn’t false modesty or fishing for compliments on my part, merely the fact that I looked at the previous results and the relatively small fields (about 150) were made up of mostly club runners.

Today at work, I was tethered to my desk – every time I sauntered past the window, I peered at the steady downpour, sighed and wondered what I was letting myself in for.

I arrived at the race in plenty of time to register and collected my race number. As the nice lady handed over number 34, the panic set in. Thirty-four. Three four. That’s quite a low number. I went to sit in the car and listen to some calming Radio Four.

I watched the steady stream of very wiry men in very short shorts and sent increasingly distressed text messages to Ginge. My main concern was that I was going to be left further and further behind whilst the rest of the race became tinier specks in the distance. It was going to be just like school cross-country all over again. Except that I wouldn’t be doing it in gym knickers. The SOS texts peaked with “I AM THE ONLY PERSON HERE WITH MORE THAN 5% BODY FAT”.

The view from the sanctuary of the car

I went back to lurking at race HQ and was rewarded by a lovely chap telling me not to worry, it was a race of mixed abilities and no matter what, the scenery was lovely and I should just enjoy it. He pointed out that even though it’s a small race, it draws people in from all over the northwest, so it must be worth doing. I distracted myself by looking at the schools’ collages and leaflets about the forthcoming beer festival while the start time grew ever closer.

The race organiser drew the start line across the path, I shuffled towards the back of the pack, had a chat with a lady who was on her own because her friends had jibbed on her and before I knew it, the airhorn was sounded and we were off.

I set off like a greyhound from a trap; an aging, portly greyhound, but the similarity was there. With the benefit of hindsight, I realise that I shouldn’t have set off at the pace that I did. With hindsight, I realised that the first half a mile was run about 30 sec/mile faster than the fastest pace I was aiming for. Oops. I managed to maintain a decent pace for the first mile or so (basically until we hit the first hill). I should know that the fact that the race was run in a valley should indicate that there will be a hill or two. Heck, I’ve run in the park before I know that there’s blooming great hills all over the show. I will confess to a bit of walking, then a bit more decent pace, then a bit more uphill walking. Around half way, I was overtaken by a pensioner with calves like billiard balls in a sock who powered past me up the incline.

The steady rain continued to pour down sapping my enthusiasm and my legs as we plodded across an exposed hillside, cows either side, the wind dragging the rain across us. There were no mile markers and my sense of direction went completely haywire leaving me with no idea where we were in relation to HQ. There were times when I couldn’t see the runners in front of me, but luckily the route was well marked and well supervised by stoical marshalls enduring the weather. With just over a mile to go, I spotted a familiar umbrella and there was Ginge to give me a cheer before he scooted down a shortcut and saw me stumble across the finish line.

I was soaked to the skin, my legs were complaining bitterly, I finished nearly last. Somehow I finished with a big smile across my chops and the knowledge that it’s a three race series and, if I wanted to,  I could do it all over again next month. And the month after that.

So what was the treasure that saw me complete a race that has terrified me for years?

Well, this race used to be organised for the Lancashire Wildlife Trust, but now raises funds for the Cuerden Valley Park Trust. Luckily for me they kept the name and so running the Badger 10k Trail Run ticked off number 52 suggested by both Jo and Rachel.

Badger! Badger! Badger!

The lovely chap (who finished in the first 25 by the way) was spot on about the race – incredibly friendly, beautiful scenery and very well organised – I would heartily recommend it. Especially if you’re slower than I am. And you bring better weather.