JogBlog running blog

This Janathon was the lamest effort of all the ‘athons so far. Oh well, Juneathon isn’t that far away and I can redeem myself then.

Today I cycled about 2.2 miles to the station, then about .8 miles to uni, then I didn’t even have to cycle back, as Shaun picked me up on the way back from his dad’s.

The shame.

I’ll do a ‘thank you for joining in’ post and announce the ‘winner’ (even if anyone who’s been checking the leaderboard on Running Free Online will know who it is anyway (especially as it’s now February in his time zone so he finished before everyone else)) tomorrow.

In the meantime, well done everyone who completed Janathon 2012 and good luck to those of you still to complete it!

Stats (cycling)
Distance: about 2.89 miles (I didn’t Garmin it)
Time: about 20 minutes
Speed: not very fast
Pitiful Janathon efforts from me: 1

I was going to go for a bike ride this afternoon but Shaun came back from work early and we went to see his dad and then it was dark and I didn’t want to cycle in the dark and so I did my weedy one mile walk thing.

Stats
Distance: 1 mile
Time: 15:56
Pace: 15:53 m/m

Anal retention, or attention to detail? Hmm, let’s look at this in more detail and decide.

As I said the other day, It Ain’t Fast and it Ain’t Pretty asked on Twitter for volunteers to draw the letters of JANATHON with their GPS watches. I drew the O and Shaun said he’d do the A.

Being the perfectionist he is, he got me to type an A (originally in Times New Roman, then I decided a without wiggly bits sans serif font would be easier. We also thought a lower case ‘a’ would be easier but Shaun decided to make it difficult for himself) on Word then blow it up big so he could work out how best to do it, then he got all technical with a calculator and measurements and stuff and plotted it all out on a piece of paper

and off we went to a field to do the deed. The field was full of sheep

but they didn’t seem to mind a small bloke whipping out a tape measure

and planting socks on the ground

ably assisted by his able assistant

but then the sheep did seem to be a bit confused

and ran away

while Shaun carried on plotting

and plotting

and then I spotted this sign which made me cry with errant apostrophe anger (although it didn’t make me as angry as I got when Shaun for some unknown reason said ‘my bad’ about something – I told him there were not enough special or extenuating circumstances in the world for me to let him off saying ‘my bad’)

and then Shaun ran his A and I thought after all the effort he had put in to plotting it, the least I could do was video it.

Update

I can’t believe I uploaded all those photos and a video but didn’t actually post the picture of the legendary A. I am a der-brain. Here it is.

Good innit?

Shaun has blogged his A run here.

Stats
Janathon As: 1

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