JogBlog running blog

After a reverse sleepness night, i.e. I fitfully slept between 3am and 7am, instead of between 11pm and 3am, I get up with the resolve to beat Cedric, my Garmin’s virtual partner as, after all, I’m only down for two miles today and if I can’t do two miles at 10 minute miles, then I’m even feebler than I originally thought and so I consult the Gmaps Pedometer website as I’m planning to go along the boring bit as that will save me from having to stop at the main road and going over the footbridge and Gmaps says that one mile is not even as far as the bridge and I think but hang on, I’m sure my Garmin tells me a mile is up to the marina but I think ho hum, I’ll just see what happens and I get outside and I think oh shit, I’ve forgotten my gloves and it’s a bit nippy out what with it being December and a particularly cold December at that but I think oh well, I’m only going to be out for 20 minutes and I set off and it tells me Cedric’s in the lead, and I think what? already? and he stays in the lead for a while until I catch him up and I think ha ha, take that Cedric, I’m going to be the champion and there’s an old man standing by the railings pretending to look at something and I think why’s that old man standing by the railings pretending to look at something and he stops pretending to look at something and walks/shuffles off and I get towards the bridge and my Garmin does indeed say I’ve almost gone a mile and I think it’s just as well as I can see a truck clearing away the carpets that I saw yesterday had been dumped outside the bridge and as my Garmin ticks over to a mile I turn round and go back the way I came and I think I’ve never done that before and then Keane or some such shite comes on my iPod and I think fuck off Keane and quickly skip that track and I think Keane are so unnecessary, just like Coldplay, Travis and the Ting Tings who shouldn’t be played on XFM which, after all, is supposed to be London’s Only Alternative or at least it was in the olden days before Capital took it over and I overtake the old man again who is still walking and hasn’t stopped again to pretend to look at something and then there’s a woman running alongside her kid on its bike and I don’t think the kid’s going to be able to get out of my way as he’s looking a bit wobbly and the woman doesn’t look like she’s going to move either and I think what am I supposed to do then? and then the woman does move but only to the other side of the kid and I think that doesn’t really help much, they’re still taking up the pavement and I manage to go round the side of her and she doesn’t look very happy but I think fuck off, it’s my pavement too and I’m nearly home and still in the lead and I’m knackered and a bit light-headed and I think oh, maybe this is what training’s about, putting a bit of effort in and then my Garmin says goal reached, press the stop button and I press the stop button and the little stick man who’s pretending to be me is standing there with its arms in the air in a I’ve just done an Ironman pose and it says success, you had 00:00:55 to spare which means that I am the champion.  Sorry Cedric.

Splits

Stats:
Distance: 2.00 miles
Time: 19:06 minutes
Pace: 9:32
Calories: 177
Old men pretending to look at something: 1
Women with kids on bikes in my way: 1
Cedrics beaten: 1

As is usual when I go to sleep before 11pm, I wake up at 3am and can’t get back to sleep although I must have done at one point as I dreamt I was a fit bloke, which was an unusual experience for me, what with me being an unfit woman and that and I get up at a reasonable hour as today’s schedule has me down for 3.5 miles and I decide to use my Garmin for more than just telling me how slowly I’m going and how far I haven’t gone and I set up the virtual partner to race me at 10 minute miles which I know I can do, it’s just that I usually don’t, and it’s a bit icy outside and bloody freezing and I’m thinking I should have put two tops on and my lips are numb and as I get to the marshes there’s a hardcore runner out in just a short sleeve t-shirt and shorts and I think brrrrrrrrrr and as I get up to to the marina a girl runs past and says morning then four cyclists come along and one of them says morning and although I don’t really approve of cyclists I decide to be polite and say morning back as I don’t want to give the impression runners are miserable although I’d like cyclists more if they didn’t give the impression that they like going through red lights and cycling on pavements and I’m still ahead of my little virtual partner that I’ve decided to call Cedric and I run up the bridge and skid along the top of it on the ice and I think whoops, and I get over the other side without falling over and I brush the ice off the sign that says something about the cows and it says that if you see the cows having any problems to tell a marshal and I think what kind of problems do cows have? and it says what make of cow they are and it also says they’ll be here until January and I think January? waa, it’s almost January now and it’s not fair and there’ll be no more cows until July and maybe not even then as this year they were late and didn’t arrive until mid-August I think and while I’ve been pissing around trying to think what problems cows have, Cedric’s overtaken me and I think oops and I try and catch him up but I’m feeling a bit feeble and as I get back to the stables I think someone’s behind me and I can see a shadow but it’s only my shadow and I think bloody hell, I really am scared of my own shadow and I scroll through the screens on my Garmin and it’s pretty cool as it shows me how far behind I am and how far I’ve got to go in minutes and feet and it gets to 35 minutes and tells me I’m a loser and I think fine, if Cedric’s that far ahead, he can put the kettle on and then I think, hang on, it’s not a real little man, it’s just a pretend one and he can’t really put the kettle on and I don’t know if the Garmin will carry on recording now the time’s up and I don’t want to run if the Garmin’s not recording it but I think it is as it’s showing me in minus time and I stop the clock and it tells me I’m 1:13 over time and I have been quite spectacularly beaten by the little stick man.  I’ll get him next time.

Splits

Stats:
Distance: 3.56 miles
Time: 36:40 minutes
Pace: 10:18
Calories: 357
Virtual partners called Cedric: 1
Hardcore runners not wearing much: 1
Female runners saying hello: 1
Cyclists saying hello: 1
Cows with problems: 8
Cows leaving in January: 8
Stick men beating me: 1
Music:
The Jim Jones Revue
Siouxsie & The Banshees
Levellers
Oasis
Hole
The Twang

I don’t think I left the house on Tuesday, nor on Christmas Eve.  Christmas Day I only left the house because Shaun wanted to drag me round the marshes for three miles and I didn’t leave the house yesterday either.  Oops, well I’ve always quite fancied being a hermit.  Still, as far as I know, hermitry isn’t the best half-marathon training in the world and I look at my training schedule and tick off how many I’ve done in the last two weeks and the grand total is 3 out of 7 runs.  Oh.  I seem to have completed all the rest days though so it’s not all bad.  But I didn’t stay in last night and not drink for no reason so I get my new pink iPod Shuffle and take my hangover-free self out round the marshes for the four miles as prescribed by Mr Higdon.

And just as I’ve got round the corner the boring dark grey Beetle comes down the road and I think why do I see that same boring dark grey Beetle every time? and a woman with a dog says hello and I think that’s politer than the miserable gits on Christmas Day and then I get to the marshes and a runner goes past and says hello and then further up two more runners go past and say hello and then I get to the bridge at the marina and there’s a man with a dog on the other side of the gate and he waits for me to go through first and I say thank you and I wonder why everyone today is polite and friendly and maybe the people on Christmas Day were people who only ever go to the marshes on Christmas Day as a special treat for saddos or something and then I get to the bridge and there’s a woman at the end of it with a dog just standing there like people who stand at the gates at the tube so you can’t get through and she eventually moves and I go past the ice rink and the stables and I’m feeling paranoid but I go down the path anyway and up to the footbridge and I think maybe I should have gone back the way I came but I get over the footbridge without getting murdered and I look at my Garmin as it ticks over to 3 miles and I think fuck, that’s slower than I did on Christmas Day and a few days ago I decided to go raw vegan for January but I can’t find any decent blogs or websites on it and it all looks a bit difficult so I think I might just be the usual kind of vegan instead and at least then I can still have a pizza, albeit one without cheese.

Splits

Stats:
Distance: 4.14 miles
Time: 43:54 minutes
Pace: 10:36
Calories: 410
Days of hermitry: 4
Polite women with dogs:1
Polite runners: 3
Polite men with dogs: 1
Stupid women with dogs on bridges in my way: 1
Decent raw vegan websites: 0
Music:
Cardiacs
Graham Coxon
Devo
Ween
Scissor Sisters
New Model Army
PJ Harvey

Every Christmas, starting from the day after my birthday, I get sluggish with a capital S.  Actually make that sluggish with a capital l, u, g, g, i, s and h too and so when on Christmas Day Shaun comes up with the bright idea of going for a run, I say noooooo I can’t, I’ve got a stomach ache and he says it’s ok, it’ll make me feel better and so I say noooooo I can’t, running together’s naff and he says it’s ok, it’s Christmas Day, naffness is allowed and I say noooooo I can’t, I’ve got roast potatoes to make and he says it’s ok, we can make them when we get back and I say noooooo I can’t, there’s champagne to be drunk and chocolates to be eaten and he says it’s ok, we can eat and drink when we get back and I say noooooo I can’t, my hair’s clean and it’ll get greasy and dirty and I can’t be bothered to wash it again and he can’t think of an answer to that one and just looks at me blankly and says please? and I think I do want to try out his new Garmin Forerunner 405 and so I say ok then and he puts a scruffy old jumper over his nice new running top and he’s got dodgy shorts on and I say I can’t be seen out with you looking like that and he says yes you can, come on and he goes outside with his new Garmin 405 and my old Garmin Forerunner 301 and he comes back two seconds later and says his 405’s got a signal already and I think I need a 405 too and we wait for my 301 to get a signal which it does eventually and I think I’m going to look like a saddo with this thing taking up half my arm and we get outside and I go to turn my new pink iPod Shuffle on and then remember that I didn’t bring it out with me and we head off towards the marshes and I remember why I don’t like running without my iPod and it’s not just to drown out Shaun’s whittering but also to drown out the sound of my heavy breathing and stomping feet and we pass quite a few people but not one of them says Merry Christmas or morning or anything, the miserable gits, and I get a stitch and I’m going really slowly, so slowly in fact that at one point Shaun stops to walk and he’s still going faster than me and we eventually get round the three miles and go home to make roast potatoes and watch the cat play with the strangest looking mouse toy in the world ever.

Stats:
Distance: 3.02 miles
Time: 31:58 minutes
Pace: 10:35
Calories: 276
Excuses for not running: 5
Excuses for not running taken notice of: 0
Pink iPods: 1
Strange looking mouse toys: 1
People saying Merry Christmas: 0

Yesterday was my birthday and I was given the coolest phone in the world ever

and a pair of purple Converse.

Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be Retro Chick.

Stats:
80s retro phones: 1
Purple pairs of Converse: 1
Dirty Monkeys: 1
Cloud books: 1

Although my training regime for the Royal Parks Half Marathon consisted of only doing a maximum of 7 miles and drinking a bottle and a half of wine the night before resulted in me finishing only 5 minutes slower than the Roding Valley Half Marathon which I did train for properly, doing 12 miles in training and drinking nothing stronger than water the night before, I decide that this time I will train properly(ish) and print off the Hal Higdon’s novice half marathon training program and I print off the novice one instead of the intermediate one as the intermediate one has all that confusing 5 x 400 5k pace stuff on it and I don’t have a 5k pace, I just have a pace, a slow one, and the novice one has less confusing stuff on it like run 4 miles on Sunday and I decide to be a rebel and switch Sunday for Saturday as I don’t think Hal Higdon would really care and anyway he looks too old and feeble to come after me and tell me off or give me a scary face look or something and I go and put my new Asics Cumulus 9s on which are the same as my old shoes which I got for the bargain price of £35 from Start Fitness

and because they were such a bargain price I got myself a new running top too.

And I head off on day 1 training for the half marathon that all the cool people are doing, i.e. me, Shaun, The Red Bucket, irunbecauseilovefood, Sore Limbs, Mrs Sore Limbs, my web designer friend Boris (er, about time you updated your blog, eh Boris?) and our mountain mate Leighsa and I get to the marina and a girl passes me and smiles and says hello and I say hello back and then I’m over the bridge and the cows have been moved but they’re miles away and a group of six runners are coming up towards me and taking up the whole path and I think uh oh, are they going to move and let me get past? and they do move and I think that’s nice and polite and more polite than people who steal blogs and if you look far down below at the end of the page, you’ll see a copyright notice that most of you won’t need to concern yourselves with as you are nice people who won’t steal my blog but one of you out there, and you know who you are, but if you don’t here’s a clue - you have the words “road” and “running” in your blog title, STOLE MY BLOG and republished it to make it look like his own and when confronted with oi, why did you steal my blog? (hmm, could work on my tact a bit more perhaps), instead of saying I’m sorry Miss JogBlog, Your Royal Highness, but because your blog is the bestest blog in the whole wide world, I thought that if I ripped off your content and made it look like it was my blog it would make me more attractive to the opposite sex and maybe I’d get a shag, I was told that it wasn’t stolen but he had just taken the feed.  WHAT THE FUCK?!!  Taking someone’s content and republishing it to make it look like your own to make money on the back of it isn’t stealing?  Listen, go back and re-read ProBlogger, then come back and tell me where it says it’s ok to steal someone’s blog.  Although I can save you the bother.  It doesn’t say that.  Anywhere.

Splits

Stats:
Distance: 4.16 miles
Time: 44:27 minutes
Pace: 10:41
Calories: 382
New pairs of shoes for a bargain price: 1
New running tops: 1
Blogstealers: 1
Music:
Cardiacs
Jeff Buckley
Manic Street Preachers
Auf Der Maur
Calvin Harris
The The
Adam & The Ants

I woke up nice and warm and comfy in my bed and thought I have to get up and go for a run, I’ll do six miles today, then I got up and looked out of the spare room window and it looked like this

and so I thought .. na, sod it.

Stats:
Distance: 0 miles
Thoughts of na, sod it: 1

I decided I was spending too much time on Facebook, so took the drastic decision to deactivate my account, just for a little while you understand, not forever, just in a I-like-to-piss-myself-off-now-and-again-by-abstaining-from-the-things-I-enjoy-the-most kind of way and so at around 10pm last night, I deactivated my account and this morning I woke up really early and thought what shall I do?  I know, I can spend lots of time on Facebook before I go to work, hurrah, and then remembered that bah, no, I can’t, I deactivated my account, maybe I’ll go for a run instead and then I thought na, it’s too cold, maybe I’ll get up and read or do some writing but then I fell back asleep and woke up with only the time to do the usual morning stuff minus the stalking-people-on-Facebook things and when I got to work I was missing Facebook so much, I decided to make my own paper-based Facebook and wrote down what I would have updated my Facebook status with.  Here are the results:

(Imagine each one preceded by “Cathy is” [anyone even THINKING the word “sad” at this point is going to be in big trouble].)

1. missing Facebook (at 09:30)
2. the owner of the Roots 30th Anniversary Edition DVD box set (09:47)
3. eating an apple: (10:36)
4. writing down the things she would have posted on Facebook (10:47)
5. cancelling her mobile internet subscription (11:02)
6. missing Facebook (11:20)
7. wondering what everyone’s doing on Facebook (11:21)
8. wondering if ginger people should wear tight green jeans (11:25)
9. wondering if Sainsburys are going to give her a free box of chocolates again this year (11:37)
10. wondering if she will be able to resist the urge to re-activate her Facebook account tonight (12:36)
11. wondering if Shaun’s on drugs (14:00)
12. going to resist eating any more chocolate brownies (14:27)
13. wondering if going Facebook cold turkey for a week involves not logging on tonight to let everyone know she’s going cold turkey for a week (14:54)
14. going to ignore the fact there’s food in the boardroom (14:54)
15. ignoring the cream cakes (14:56)
16. wondering how she got chosen as a guru (15:30)
17. wondering what to give up for a month next (15:40)
18. wondering whether to meet Gary in a bar instead of outside the cheese shop (16:00)
19. happy that she at least has webmail even if she has no Facebook (16:19)
20. going to meet Gary outside the cheese shop (16:59)
21. looking at the www.pizzamaniac.com website (17:00)
22. wondering why people put make up on to go home (17:10)
23. wondering why, if Stella is so reassuringly expensive, is Tescos selling 8 cans for £4?

Now that I’ve written this, I’m wondering how “eating a banana” got left off somewhere between ignoring the cream cakes and being a guru.  Surely that was an important part of the day?

Stats:
Online Facebooks: 0
Paper-based Facebooks: 1
Bananas forgotten about inbetween ignoring cream cakes and being a guru: 1

Today I was busily checking my personal email at work (woo hoo, I found a webmail site they haven’t blocked.  Yet.) and sitting in my inbox was a Wordpress notification letting me know that someone had commented on a post.  Hurrah, thought I.  But alas, it wasn’t a comment from an adoring fan, it was a comment from a dirty spammer.  Boo hiss.  Someone calling themselves Running Shoes London left a comment about how expensive running shoes are but don’t they fit well and they’d bought some last year and are really comfy.

Hmm, I wonder if these expensive, well fitting and really comfy shoes are from The Jog Shop, which is where the link led to?  Surely not.

I replied to let them know I deleted their comment due to it being blatant spam (couldn’t they even at least try to disguise it?) but if they’d like to get in touch with me, I’ll let them know my rates for a text link or advertising space.

They didn’t reply.  Funny that.

In preparation for today’s Santa Stampede, Shaun and I decide to recreate our race preparation for the Tottenham 5 although with the hope of avoiding any young Polish men based road rage incidents this time and hurrah, we get a taxi from the sex change pub and get to the restaurant without our cab driver swearing at any young Polish men driving in bus lanes and cutting him up and I drink too much wine and don’t really remember my pizza which apparently doesn’t mean I get another one to make up for the one I don’t remember and we get up in the morning and make our way to Dagenham and meet up with some of our mountain mates and get our Santa suits which aren’t exactly a size zero and I could fit at least three of me into mine and Shaun could probably fit four of him into his but somehow Alan seems to have got a bespoke Santa suit as it fits him perfectly while the rest of us would be arrested if we got anywhere near ho ho ho-ing distance of small children and we hang around waiting for the start and the man starting the race says something about fast runners going to the front and Shaun says he’s going to run with me and take it easy and just treat it like a training run and then the countdown from ten begins and as soon as the countdown’s finished, Shaun zooms off leaving me for dust and I’m trying not to slip on the ice and at one mile a horrible little eight year old boy pokes me and I think two inches lower and I would have punched him and I drag myself round the streets of Dagenham wondering if a bottle and a half of wine was a good idea the evening before a race and at 2.5 miles there’s a photographer and I attempt a smile but I think I failed and as I’m nearing the end Alan overtakes me and Shaun’s waiting on the corner and I get to the finish line in 29:22 which would be a PB but my Garmin says it’s only 3.03 miles and I think waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, why can’t they ever measure a proper 5k route and I know it’s a fun run but it would be more fun if I knew if I’d PB’d or not and I’ve never done a proper 5k, it’s always less, and Shaun says he finished in 21 minutes and there was a 13 year old girl who did 6:30 all the way round and then the others finish soon after me and Tracey turns up, driven by her mum who’s given her a lift all of, um, about quarter of a mile and we go to the pub where I’ve booked a table and we look at the not very impressive menu which says there’s vegetarian options available and Tracey asks what they are and the waitress looks at us like WHAT THE FUCK? VEGETARIANS? QUICK, CALL THE POLICE! and she says er, I’ll check but I think it’s vegetable hotpot, macaroni cheese and cauliflower cheese and the waitress goes off and comes back and says we have no hotpot, only macaroni cheese and cauliflower cheese and Tracey says I’m allergic to cheese and the waitress looks blankly at her and Tracey says do you have any sandwiches? and the waitress goes off and comes back and says we can do you a beef or turkey sandwich and Tracey says um, I’m vegetarian and the waitress goes off again and says we can do you a tuna sandwich, do you eat fish? and Tracey says no, and so we decide to leave the pub that offers vegetarians beef, turkey and tuna and go to the Wetherspoons up the road and get a nice veggie roast dinner.  Yum.

Splits

Stats:
Distance: 3.03 miles
Time: 29:22 minutes
Pace: 9:42
Calories: 276
Road rage incidents: 0
Pizzas: 1
Pizzas I remember: 0
Santa suits: 1
Horrible 8 year olds poking me: 1
Pubs offering vegetarians beef, turkey and tuna: 1