There are some days when you rue the decision to defer your run from the early morning. When the alarm went off, it seemed the best idea in the world; when I arrived home in the cold, wet and dark with the wind whistling at the back door, I really wasn’t so keen. I did try my best to outsource today’s Janathon (thanks Sue for the kind offer of “bike ride home”) but I realised that Janathon by proxy would probably incur the wrath of JogBlog, which is not something to be trifled with.

Miles went in his zip lock food bag hi-tech waterproof casing on top of the wheelie bin his special satellite seeking cradle and luckily I arsed about conducted meticulous preparation enough for the rain to pass. It was back to the audiofuel intervals today (in preparation for the next time I challenge Miles to his mile challenge) and home for a healthy tea of falafels.

In other news, I appear to have taken yesterday’s advice to heart and have jumped into something at work and also stuck my name in the hat for the Royal Parks Half ballot. My main reason for this is ‘medal envy’ and the fact that lots of Athoners ran it last year and quite frankly, I felt left out (all together now, ahhhhhhhhhhhh).

I like Ginge, he often points out the obvious, like if I’m on training and will be home earlier than normal then I don’t have to do an early run. So I didn’t. I enjoyed the extra time this morning by mostly wasting it and ending up late. Ah well.

By the time I got home, got changed and got distracted by buying something on Amazon, Ginge himself was home so I sacked off the planned intervals and enjoyed a bit of company (the other option was me setting off in one direction and him going in the other, which just seemed daft). It was just three miles, and relatively uneventful apart from the brief delay where I had to take my tights off and turn them the right way out (before we left, not at the roadside…) and a narrowly avoided decapitation by a stray hawthorn branch. We just did a three mile out and back, but I’ve carried on trying to up my pace a little. We’re still making conversation but it’s more of an effort for me (probably to the relief of Ginge).

Of course, Wednesday night is yoga night and it’s with a certain sigh of relief that I’ve returned to my usual class instead of Monday’s power class. We appear to be working on sun salutations, but in this class we’ll do them section by section and use other poses to build up each block rather than just rattle through the sequence like last week. Unfortunately, I seem to have done a bit of a Punch and Judy and have arrived just in time for the arrival of the crocodile.

My explanation of the sequence was a bit rubbish last week, so for Adele (and anyone else who’s interested) this explains the sequence in full and this demonstrates crocodile. It’s a bit planky (I bet that some of you lot plank like this, probably for days at a time) and the challenging bit is going from a standing forward bend, straight into crocodile just by jumping your feet back. I am at a stage of either going SPLAT or compromising with upward facing dog – I probably need to be more fearless with my jumping. Which seems a good enough life lesson to end on.

It is with great pleasure that I bring you the good news that the house of Ginge is reconnected to the internet. I’m typing this on an actual keyboard with my actual hands. I’ve said before that the greatest pleasure of the Athons is being part of this lovely encouraging slightly bonkers community of fellow idiots athletes, and while I’ve been able to keep an eye on things via my phone, it just hasn’t been the same. Commenting and posting photos or links has been annoying at times, and the whole thing has been reliant on my slightly temperamental 3G connection.

Anyway, today was a post-work run with Ginge after spending the afternoon craving anything with a crumb. We did a cracking pace, apart from the brief walk where I was floored by my insides revolting and me going somewhat dizzy. Seeing as we were still a mile and a half away from home, I was quite relieved when this passed and we managed to get home in one piece.

Despite the re-connectedness, this is only going to be a short post because we still have Sunday’s Sherlock to watch as I keep having narrow misses with spoilers. However, the two important things that I have to do are to fulfil my promise to sponsor Mark at Reliable Plodder who has a London Marathon place and will be running for the mental health charity Mind (and may or may not do it dressed as a Chewbacca), and say hello again to the ball-o-rama.