Category: Juneathon 2011

Juneathon Day 11: Canal Adventure #10 – Chorley to Johnson’s Hillock

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Today’s plan was designed to fit in around Ginge having his hair cut and take in a sneaky bit of canal. By rights, this section was supposed to be done as part of the the very last run when I will join up the East and West sides. We parked up in town and I hoofed it down the road, up a never before run (by me anyway) hill and down the other side to the canal. For those of you that think I only run in lush green places, I have to confess to a little bit of editing on this run. Only about a quarter of it was on the towpath, so things I didn’t take pictures of included:

  1. The town’s bypass
  2. B&Q
  3. The chap drinking cans of Stella whilst sitting beside the bypass near B&Q at 9 o’clock in the morning

I did take a photo of a demonlition site, but the sign that remains seemed appropriate for Juneathon.

I need one of these for our house during the Athons

On the way to the towpath, I accidentally went through some private property – my only defence for tresspassing is that I didn’t notice the slope to the canal because my attention was caught by the brightly coloured tape, smashed up pick-up and fluorescent signs. They brought it on themselves.

Bridge 78a

Down to the canal at bridge 78a and up past the U-Boat. Yes. The U-Boat. This first appeared last year, soon caught the media’s attention (it even trended on Twitter) and is now open to the public with a full multimedia experience thrown in.

The Leeds-Liverpool U-Boat

Bonkers isn

Yup. It

Sadly, it was too early for me to have a look on board, so I plodded on.

No blog is complete without wildfowl - today: geese. Honk!

The end of the canal bit, but not the end of the run.

I’d mapped the route last night and had got it into my head that it was about 3 miles. As I reached the end of the canal section I realised that I’d misjudged that slightly and the only way that it could possibly be that distance was if I ran up the hard shoulder of the motorway (am I the only one who frequently thinks that motorways would be ace to run on?). 4.75 miles later I found Ginge in the car park and that was that.

More proper canal running is planned for tomorrow – I’ve decided to make Monday the last chance to name my Garmin (I love the ideas so far) and we’ve a crowbar on standby so that the tin of Uncle Joe’s can be prised from my grasp.
Miles run = 4.75
Canal miles completed = 1
Total canal miles = 63.6/127*
Bridges = 78A-80
U-boats = 1

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.