JogBlog running blog

Two magazines came through the door today. One had smiley people on it, one had rather pissed off people on it.

Guess which one I got?

Eek.

The sun was up, the sky was blue, it was beautiful and so was I, and when I stopped paraphrasing Siouxsie and the Banshees (not a Beatles fan, sorry), I decided to go running over the fields.

As soon as I started lumbering running, my tooth started to hurt and it reminded me of the time I was at work and a girl there said ‘there’s nothing worse than toothache’ and when I replied with ‘people with cancer might disagree with you’ was met with a blank look as she swiftly turned round and carried on the usual bunch-of-women-in-an-office conversation about husbands, kids, food shopping and X-Factor and then I went through the first field and over the stile and in the next field standing by the gate were a load of sheep and most of them gaily skipped through the gate except for this one sheep who just stood there and so I stopped and he took a step forward and I thought he was going to go through the gate and I could follow him and so I took a step forward but then he stopped to let me go first and so I stopped to let him go first instead and it ended up in a ‘no, you go first’, ‘no YOU go first’ typically British situation and I didn’t really want to end up in a side-to-side dance on the pavement thing with a sheep and so I went through the gate first and he followed me through and I got to the next field and oh fuck, like this time last year, the farmer had furrowed his field again and I thought to myself, if there’s a sign that says ‘footpath’ the least it could do is have a fucking path on the other side of it and not twenty acres of mud and so I trudged through the mud in the general direction I thought the next stile was but I couldn’t see it and when I got over the next little bridge the next field was also all mud and I wasn’t happy and I turned round and I didn’t want to do a Plan B run as I was pissed off by then and just wanted to go back but I didn’t go back the way I came, but did a little detour along the road and as I went down the nice downhill open stretch bit there was a learner driver stopped in the road and the cars couldn’t get around it and I rubbernecked while I went past to see what was up with the driver and briefly pondered if I should stop and pretend to do my laces up so I could get a proper look but there didn’t seem to be anything up with her and she was just sitting there and not thumping her fists frustratedly on the steering wheel like I would have been if I had forgotten where the go-forward-and-stop-holding-up-the-traffic-behind-you-pedal was and I carried on running down the hill and I got home severely pissed off that my training run was scuppered by the field full of mud.

I saw a camera on a tripod at the beginning of the Ashford 5k on Friday, but thought nothing of it at the time. Then a video nasty appeared on Nice Work’s Facebook Page.

You can see me wonkily lumbering past at about 30 seconds, just as the race had started, and not quite in last position yet.

I had trouble embedding the video, but you can watch it here.

You can also see iliketocount part-way through the race at 8:41 and crossing the finish line with a very manly grunt at 15:18.  

There’s also lots of interviews with the winners and a few other runners (she didn’t want to talk to me though. Not that I saw her talking and filming anyone, but that’s not the point).

It was the last of the local 5ks on Friday. I made a last minute decision to run it and when I got to the park, realised that in my haste to leave the house, I had forgotten my Garmin. While getting my race number, I mentioned to Martin – Nice Work’s race director – that I’d forgotten it and he immediately offered me his to borrow. What a gent!

The race started, I trotted around the park for 31 minutes and 49 seconds and crossed the finish line…

… last!

But with a time of 31:49, that’s not really something I can be ashamed of. And anyway, seeing as I was hardcore and ran for longer than anyone else, I reckon I was the winner really.

So there.

I’d actually forgotten that after my last long run, my leg was hurting badly and I was limping for a few days after. Along with my cold came a bad back that lasted for a week and I didn’t even notice that my leg had got better until fellow running bloggers fairweatherrunner and thereisasixpackunderhere reminded me today by saying on Twitter that their injuries seemed to be better now.

After yesterday’s successful trip to the gym, I thought it was probably time I got back out for a run. Just three miles to see how I got on and to make sure my leg didn’t fall off, a la Travelling Hopefully’s barometer of a successful run.

The first mile was done in 10 minutes and 25 seconds and I thought whoop whoop, go me, but the next mile was quite slow but I was still finding it quite easy but then Kate Nash came on my iPod and put me off my stride and I stopped to skip her as although I used to like her, now I just think she’s an annoying little girl and after I’d skipped her, the next few seconds were spent with me standing in a field skipping songs until I found one that met with my approval for continuing with this morning’s run.

Matt Stevens… skip…

The Shins… skip…

Jesus and Mary Chain… skip…

Cardiacs… skip…

The Wombats… skip…

Sleeper… Ah! Yes! Sleeper! 90s indie Britpop at its finest! You can’t go wrong with a bit of 90s indie Britpop (unless it’s Menswear) and so I carried on with my run and wondering if maybe I should get some headphones with some kind of controllable doo-dah on them so I don’t have to keep stopping while I’m skipping and I think my iPod came with some controllable headphones but I’m not wearing the shitty crappy headphones that Apple make and Steve Jobs should be out of a job for selling something so shit and then I remember that Steve Jobs doesn’t actually have a job anymore and I get further down the field and there’s a slug on the path and I’m worried that the slug will get squished and I want to move him onto the grass but I can’t remember if slugs burn if a human touches them or is that only caterpillars? and maybe slugs only burn when humans put salt on them and so I leave the slug on the pavement and think sorry slug, I’ll just have to leave you with the lesson that life isn’t fair and it’s a dog eat dog or, at the very least, a human squish slug kind of world and I get home after doing three miles which makes me think maybe I can do tomorrow’s 5k race after all.

I don’t want to do one of those lame-o ‘Sorry I haven’t blogged for a while’ posts (I mean, does anyone even notice when someone hasn’t blogged for a while? And even if they have noticed, do they care? I, personally, a) don’t usually; and b) don’t anyway, but maybe that’s because I’m just a grumpy old moo) but I’m trying to get into the habit of writing regularly and not just mini-reviews on Planet Veggie describing a cup of artichoke tea as ‘beyond minging’ and ‘probably tastes like a turtle’s anus’.

My training for the Folkestone Rotary Half Marathon and the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon was going sort-of-okay until I got a bit of a sniffle was horrifically struck down by a crippling immune system destroying virus which meant that any running- or gym-based activities came to a bit of a slow down. OK, so what I mean is that they stopped completely and I have done fuck all exercise for over a week. 

And now the Folkestone Half is only two-and-a-bit weeks away.

Eek.

But just to reassure you that I have got my priorities right, I checked out our post-half eating and drinking venue – Googies – last Saturday and very nice it is too.