JogBlog running blog

Despite reading Janathon blogs and tweets, and Shaun putting on his running gear, I completely forgot I was a Janathon participant and was actually supposed to be doing something myself today. I didn’t want to do anything but as Shaun said he was going to run for an hour, I thought the least I could do is go for a walk. So I walked for half a mile and turned round but I misjudged it and got back to the house at .95 of a mile which is where a long driveway comes in handy as after walking up to the end of it and back down to the front door, that took me nicely up to a nice round mile.

Stats (walking)
Distance: 1 mile
Time: 17:10
Speed: 17:08
Janathons nearly forgot about: 1

Last night on Twitter, Tim at It Ain’t Fast and It Ain’t Pretty asked for volunteers to GPS draw the letters in Janathon. I asked if I could do the ‘o’ (because that sounded easiest) and he said yes.  This morning, I sobered up and changed my mind as I couldn’t think of where I could run an ‘o’ and I wasn’t going to run round a roundabout. Then I thought aha! I can do it on my bike and I asked Tim if I could do it on my bike and he said he couldn’t think why not, so I went off on my bike to the little quiet roundabout down the road and went round and round and round and round and round and maybe another round then came home and looked at the pretty ‘o’ I had drawn.

And now I am stupidly pleased with myself. It doesn’t take much.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 1.66 miles there and back
Distance: .13 miles round the roundabout 5 or 6 times
Time cycling round the roundabout: 55 seconds
Os made: 1

I’m only writing this because I’ve just realised I haven’t written today’s Janathon post yet.

Um, today’s Janathon consisted of:

cycling to the station

cycling to uni

going to lunch with a friend

having a giggling fit in the seminar

cycling back to the station

sitting on the train

cycling back home via the wine shop

drinking wine

watching telly

I tried to think of more, but, nope, that’s about it.

Oh, I lusted after Noel on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, although my squeal was a bit muted after seeing he looked a bit pasty and podgy. But, still, it’s Noel. Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Stats:
Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees: 1

I cycled to the station, go the train to Canterbury, interviewed an author friend for a uni project, did some shopping and bought an orange, white and black stripy dress and a black bobbled hooded cardigan, got the train back to Ashford and cycled home.

It counts.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 4.4 miles

Shopping
Orange, white and black stripy dresses: 1
Black bobbled hooded cardigans: 1

It rained at lunchtime, scuppering my plan to go for a walk along the beach, so today’s Janathon is cycling to the station and back.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 6 miles

We had a quiz in our first fiction seminar. We awarded ourselves points for each timewasting exercise we do. The points are rated:

Fiddling: 1 point each

Stacking and squaring your papers. Cleaning the gunk from your keyboard keys. Cleaning the gunk from your fingernails. Adjusting the height of your chair. Adjusting the tilt of your chair…

Almost work-related distractions: 2 points each

Cutting and pasting scraps into a scrapbook. Reading a page or two of a book or a magazine to ‘get in the mood’. Rearranging the order of the notes in a ring-binder. Counting the words you’ve written so far. Tidying, deleting and renaming the files and folders on your computer….

Stalling: 3 points each

Tidying your work-room. Re-reading your emails. Making lists of things to do later. Making more coffee…

Dreaming: 3 points each

More than ten minutes staring at a window or a wall. More than five minutes with your eyes closed or your head on the desk…

Skiving: 5 points each

Writing emails. Making phone calls. Doing the housework. Tackling minor repairs around the house. Walking the dog to the post box. Doing questionnaires like this one…

Absconding: 10 points each

Gardening. Decorating. Shopping. Sleeping. Visiting…

I have an essay due in today. Out of the 2000 words I need to write, I’ve written about 600. So, do I get up bright and early, go straight to my desk and start work? No, I check my emails, write some emails, get into conversations on Facebook, empty the dishwasher, load the dishwasher, do two loads of washing, empty the cat litter tray, make some soup (broccoli, cheese and chilli) and then bugger off for an hour on my bike. That’s a lot of points.

Still, I’ve got until midnight to write the essay, then I’ll have seven hours to read five chapters of Jane Austen’s Persuasion that I need to have read by  tomorrow. Who needs sleep, anyway?

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 9.3 miles
Time: 58:08
Speed: 9.6 mph
Calories: 288
Timewasting points: lots
Essays written: about a third of one
Midnight deadlines: 1
Chapters of boring novels to read: 5

I like to sit at the bar in our local pub, because we always get to talk to people.

Last night we sat at the bar and met a man called Mike. Mike’s not very happy. We know this because within ten minutes of chatting to him he told us that he:

tried to hang himself with a rope, but it broke.
tried to drive off Dover cliffs but his car stalled.
took suicide pills but vomited them up. Three times.
saw an orb going from his car, but then saw it going back 3 hours later (apparently he has video evidence).
only has £60 a week but has been drunk every day for the last 4 years.
he has 400 friends in London and 38 in Ashford.
he got run over and got a broken disc.
he got thrown out of a car at 60 mph.
he hates his brother because he gets given £300 a week from his parents.
went out last night to meet his Ashford friends but none of them turned up. Had they been his London friends, they would have turned up and one of his London friends turned up to meet him once with tubes coming out of his nose as he’d just had an operation.
he has six and a half teeth missing and he’s his own dentist and he took them out with pliers.
he said we couldn’t guess his age within two years. He was right. We guessed 32, but he said he was 25.
he says he can’t stop smoking as he needs to smoke because he can’t take anti-depressants.

I’ve heard of open mic nights, but this is taking the piss. We moved away at this point and left him with his blue drink.

I don’t think I’ll be talking to strangers again.

Today I woke up traumatised but not too traumatised to Janathon and so we went the long way round to the farm shop on our bikes.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 3.61 miles
Time: 34:59
Speed: 6.2 (might have been quicker to walk)
Calories: 150
Men called Mike: 1
Men called Mike I’m going to talk to again: 0

I had planned to go for a run this morning but then as I stayed up ‘til 3:30am that plan was scuppered as I got up late and had to go to the supermarket and work on stories and stuff and so this afternoon I went for a mile walk and asked Shaun if he wanted to accompany me. His initial response was to tell me to fuck off but then he changed his mind and came with me. We got to the half mile point and I said shall we carry on and go further? and he said yes and so we walked down the muddy trail in the dark and he mentioned about Grant and Tom doing the Grim Night Terror and I said that they had been trying to get Adele to do it too and that she was tempted and that I wouldn’t want to do it as I’d fall over and break my leg and then we were back on the pavement and walking down the hill in the dark as there’s no streetlights and the cars were blinding me with their headlights and we got back after exactly 25 minutes.

Stats (walking)
Distance: 1.57 miles
Time: 25 minutes
Pace: 15:53
Fuck offs: 1
Night Terrors: 0
Streetlights: 0
Cars blinding me with their headlights: lots

I walked to the supermarket and bought some food wrapped in cardboard boxes because I fancied some Indian food but couldn’t be bothered to cook it and then I didn’t even need to heat up the cardboard box wrapped food myself as Shaun got too hungry while he was waiting for me to cook and so he heated it up himself and it was very nice indeed and I’m getting very good at buying processed food but I forgot to turn my Garmin off while I was in the supermarket so it looks like I walk really really really slowly.

Stats (walking)
Distance: 1.22 miles
Time: 33:13
Pace: 27:17
Calories: 87
Processed food bought: Aubergine curry, black bean dhal, samosas, pakoras, onion bhajis, chapatis, raita

Janathon today was going to be a bike ride to the station and then from the station to The Quarterhouse in Folkestone (where I was going to see One Day [great book, great film [except for the parts where Anne Hathaway’s non-regional English accent slipped into some kind of spoof Lancastrian or something one]]) and back but then Shaun rang and asked if I wanted a lift so I said yes please and so I didn’t cycle anywhere (and felt very weird on the train without my bike – my purple metal mate usually always accompanies me to Folkestone) so today’s Janathon was a 15 minute walk from Folkestone Central to The Quarterhouse and a 15 minute walk from The Quarterhouse to Folkestone Central (also including a stair exercise from the ground floor of The Quarterhouse to the bar on the first floor.

Stats
Distance: A bit under 2 miles walking and some stairs
Time: 30 minutes
Calories: probably not as many as in the large glass of wine I had in the bar