Janathon day nineteen: snowed

19/01/20137 Comments

After complaining that it hadn’t snowed and with the Met Office forecast being ‘cloudy’, it only went and flipping snowed yesterday. I was very relieved to have got my Athoning out of the way in the morning.

Today I procrastinated by building a snowpenguin…

And when I did put my running kit on, I realised I was rocking a very stylish look of black trail shoes, white socks and knee-length tights…

Feeling like a dodgy bloke on the pull in an 80s nitespot, I took myself down to the valley for a play in the snow. I used to run down here with my old running buddy and it’s where I ran the Badger 10k last Juneathon, but as a rule it feels a bit too lonely to do on my own.

There was nothing to worry about today as it was packed with excitable sledge-towing children and hundreds of dog-walkers…

There were some nattily dressed hounds, including a black labrador wearing a jaunty red scarf knotted around his neck and a quartet of greyhounds in matching jackets…

Passing all these people made me realise that running in the snow wearing knee-length tights generates several types of response. 1) I will not make eye contact with you – If I look at you, you will infect me with your madness 2) I will look at you but disapprovingly – You are clearly a mad woman and we should not encourage this sort of behaviour 3) I will look at you and beam at you with delight – You are clearly mad but it looks bloody brilliant. Number three was rare but lovely when it happened.

After misjudging a path I went bounding off into the undergrowth and was crossing my fingers that I would be able to cross the river without having to do an embarrassing U-turn… When I did reach a crossing point, my heart sank to see stepping-stones. Those of you who know me will now that this was a potentially cold and wet disaster in the making.

Luckily, I scampered across like an agile mountain goat and was able to get back to the path I know before looping back to the car park to make it three miles.

I’m faced with the opportunity to go on a group trail run in the morning, but am a little afeared of this. We shall see…

Janathon day eighteen: disappointed

18/01/20135 Comments

This morning I was been expecting to get up and venture out into a still and silent village hidden under a blanket of snow. Mentally, the blog was written – I would battle valiently against the elements to keep my Janathon honour in tact, ploughing out a token mile, I would return, heroic and be rewarded with a lovely pot of tea.

What I woke up to was a sparce covering of snow in the car park, a wet but snow-free main road and a wind-chill factor of -6^oC Pfffffffff. This was a bitterly cold three-miler on weary legs. Looking on the brightside though:

It is Friday
I have Janathoned early so I can relax for the rest of the day and, more importantly, I don’t have to run for at least 24 hours
No snow means that my weekend running options have increased immeasurably
I was still given a lovely pot of tea

I was going to take a photo of an un-snowy road, but that would have been, well, just a road. However, as I was running back up the hill, my path was crossed by a splendid fox and this gives me an excuse to include this chap from the woolly archives.

From Lauren O’Farrell’s Stitch London

Janathon day seventeen: snowing

17/01/20136 Comments

It’s been one eye on the Met Office and the other on my Janathon ‘plan’ this week. On the proviso that the threatened snow wasn’t going to set in until Friday morning, I opted for a longish after-work pootle this evening and an early one for Friday morning.

Judging by some of the overheard conversations in our office, you would have thought that there is some kind of terrible apocalypse on the horizon rather than a brief flurry of the white stuff, but there we go. It had started as I set off from work and I used the drive home to consider my running kit of choice for the evening. I spotted four runners, two in long long tights and two in shorts. I decided to compromise on my knee-length tights (this was not the time to dust off my only-worn-once-in-Kent-where-I-am-a-stranger shorts), but also knew that unless I applied JogBlog’s 3G technique, I would never leave the sofa. Despite a brief threat of faffage, I was out of the door by six (with the grim realisation that I would be doing it all over again in twelve hours).

I left the house with a strange spring in my step. The strange strange spring wore off after about a mile, I started to question my sanity and I ditched the plan of a long out and back. The falling snow was small and pointy as I started, but became fatter and more feathery around the two mile mark. I started to feel ok again and fell for the old chestnut of “ooh it’s not that windy” while the wind was behind me. This lasted until I turned around, started running into the wind and learned that even fat, feathery snow is bloody painful when it gets in your eye. Being lulled into a false sense of security put me three miles away from home, making a nice loop of six miles.

From the old days when I spent my working day photoshopping accessories onto animals instead of having a proper job

Flamingo - from a free Spud & Chloe pattern

Janathon day sixteen: motivation

16/01/20136 Comments

I was hoping to be able to blog some knitting today, but I realised that things had gone a little pear shaped and ended up spending most of last night (a) undoing my last few rounds and (b) defending my honour and integrity on twitter. Mostly (b).

Wednesday night is of course is yoga night, so it was an early Janathon run for me this morning. It was cold and dark outside and I wasn’t too keen on getting out there. Thanks to Heather for spurring me on from the (not cold and dark) Southern Hemisphere with the tweet:

This is what she learns at boot camp… http://notarunninggirl.wordpress.com/

I opted for a 3 mile out and back along a route that I haven’t yet run this year; not too slippy underfoot, I got to bellow “MORNING” at another runner and a dog walker, and it was warm enough to let my hands be visible at the end of my sleeves.

And although this isn’t the knitting that I was going to post, I’ve been wanting to show off this little fella who I knitted before Christmas.

Flamingo – from a free Spud & Chloe pattern

Janathon day fifteen: Sooty

15/01/201311 Comments

Well I survived yesterday with the help of an emergency sandwich, which is somewhat better than the old days when I would rely on a post-beer refuelling of a bacon butty, roast chicken crisps, a mars bar and a can of full fat coke to see me return to action.

When I finished work at eight, I had to de-ice my car, the roads and pavements glittered with frost and I nearly fell on my arse several times whilst crossing the car park. There was a sense of inevitablility that I wouldn’t be getting out for a 6am run this morning. I didn’t even bother trying.

Today saw me get into a discussion with JogBlog debating the relative properties of fairy wands versus magician wands via the tangent of Sooty (I’ve storified the whole conversation here if you were lucky enough to miss it on twitter). This lead to the revelation that, not only had JogBlog gone to see The Sooty Show LIVE, but runningman856 had been backstage to shake Sooty by the paw.

Which reminded me of this rather wonderful (but slightly disturbing) song by Jay Foreman (who I saw supporting Dave Gorman last year).

And also Sooty and Sweep’s appearance on Radio Four’s Today programme, which was somewhat surreal when heard live on my way to work.

Tonight was a post-shopping 3 miler in the freezing cold.

Travelling Hopefully

cos where's the fun in arriving?