Month: June 2010

On the 9th day of Juneathon, I did my first ever cycling commute

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I wasn’t going to blog tonight, I was going to blog tomorrow. But then I started reading the other Juneathon blogs and thought I MUST BLOG JUNEATHON. IT IS THE LAW. And stuff. And so here’s my blog for today.

I went to work on the train and took my bike with me on the train and then I did some work and then I said ‘I’m cycling home now’, and my workmates said ‘what, all the way?’ and I said ‘yes, all the way’ and they said ‘                    ’ and looked at me and I got my map out and asked one of my workmates about a roundabout on the route and the other workmate said ‘don’t you even know the way?’ and I said ‘no’ and she said ‘                    ’ and so I got on my bike and I cycled down the road for a bit and then I cycled down the A28 for 12.8 miles and then eventually at a grand total of 17.64 miles later, including a stoppy off bit at Tesco to get some wine I was home and that is my Juneathon for the day.

p.s. I saw a dead rabbit.

Stats (cycling):
Distance: 17.64 miles
Time: 1:49:07
Speed: 9.7mph
Calories: 539

On the eighth day of Juneathon, I went exploring

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Last night I dreamt I had a squirrel stuck up my nose. Not just his head up there with his little feet sticking out my nostril, but properly up there. In my dream I didn’t want to try pulling him out as I thought he’d be too big, so I left him up there and carried on with my day.

That dream is going to stick with me forever.

That dream wasn’t actually anything to do with Juneathon but I just wanted to share it (even though you’ve probably already read about it on Twitter or Facebook. Yes I’m one of those sad people who catalogues their every waking (or dreaming, in this case) moment via social media).

Still, as traumatised as I was, Juneathon had to continue. I decided to just do a couple of miles today, as I’m doing – for the fifth year running – the Crisis Square Mile Run on Thursday, along with Eating Trees and Fit Artist. This year’s bag-looker-afterer will be the Artist Formerly Known As Little Crutchey Man, aided by my friend Gary.

So off I went down the road and then I decided to go exploring down the footpath which isn’t a path at all

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and I think countryside people need to go and look up ‘path’ in the dictionary and all I can see is a field and I’m thinking do I just run round the field, or what? and then I come to a stile (is that the right spelling? It can’t be ‘style’, as countryside people have none)

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and I think aah, I’m allowed to cross over stiles without getting shot by ruddy-faced farmers and then I see a sign on it pointing the direction for the Greensand Way

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and I think hurrah, as I’ve been trying to find out where it is for ages and ages and so I decided to follow the Greensand Way, although not all the way, as it’s 108 miles long and then I’m in another field

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and then I cross over another stile and there’s a little bridge type thing

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and then another little bridge type thing

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and when I get over the little bridge type thing, lo! there’s a path!

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and I’m glad someone round here knows what a path is and I decide the field must belong to a Londoner and I decide this even more strongly when I get to the next stile and see it’s held together with barbed wire

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and there’s quite a nice view

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until I look to the right and see the housing development that reminds me I’m in Ashford

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because, like in London where you’re never more than six feet away from a rat, in Ashford, you’re never more than one hundred yards from a housing development, and then I get to the end of the field and there’s a road

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and although I don’t want to follow the Greensand Way any further, I’m wondering if I go right, will the road take me back? but I don’t want to climb over the stile, as it’s covered in stinging nettles

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and so I decide to go back the way I came

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and when I get to the next road I see a roundabout

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and although Ashford is the home of the roundabout, I think I recognise it and wonder if I should go back by road but I decide to continue back the way I came and I go back through the fields and back onto the road and my T-shirt is rising up in the wind and there’s someone coming towards me so I try to pull my T-shirt down but it doesn’t want to go down and so I suck in my stomach instead but I don’t want to flash my belly button as it’s a naked belly button as I had to have my belly button ring taken out as it went manky and the person coming down the road is a little old man and he smiles and I think aaah, nice little old man and he smiles back and then I get home and read up on the other Juneathon blogs and The Red Bucket has done a nice little pie chart and I think I WANT ONE and therefore he is my Juneathon Hero of the Day.

Stats:
Distance: 3.01miles
Time: 44:33
Pace: 14:48 m/m
Calories: 238
Dreams of squirrels being stuck up my nose: 1
Greensand Ways: 1
Stiles with barbed wire: 1
Stiles with stinging nettles: 1
Housing developments: 1
Roundabouts: 1
Little old men: 1
Nice little pie charts: 1

The 6th and 7th days of Juneathon

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Yesterday, after being told that no, paddling in the sea for three seconds then complaining my feet were hurting and putting my shoes back on didn’t actually count for Juneathon, and after it turning very very dark, very very quickly, then being very very sunny, very very quickly, I went out for three miles on my bike but while I was out decided to go a bit further and did five and a half miles instead.

Stats (cycling):
Distance: 5.5 miles
Time: 30:37
Speed: 10.8 mph
Calories: 180
Paddlings in sea: 1
Paddlings in sea counting as Juneathons: 0

And today, as I hadn’t been to the gym for two weeks and I don’t like to waste my membership money even though it only costs half what I was paying in London, I walked up the road and reacquainted myself with the gym and there was a girl in the changing rooms and she left her bag and clothes on the hook and I don’t know why people don’t use the lockers in this gym and so I put my bag in the locker and locked it up like the paranoid Londoner I am and in the gym was an old man wearing a long-sleeved fleecey top and I thought he must be boiling like the man we saw out running yesterday in a black t-shirt and long black trousers and after I stopped wondering why the old man was wearing so many clothes, I did twenty minutes on the cross-trainer and then I did twenty minutes on the rowing machine and then I went to do twenty minutes on the treadmill but after two minutes my left boob was hurting and I thought maybe I need a new sports bra and I put the speed down on the treadmill and my left knee was hurting as it’s been hurting since I bashed it when I fell off my bike when I cycled home drunk at one o’clock in the morning a few weeks ago and I think I’m going to get off the treadmill at five minutes but at four and a bit minutes Audiofuel comes on and I think oh no, not Audiofuel, I don’t think you’re allowed to slack when Audiofuel comes on and I keep on going after five minutes as the music has given me a boost and it’s like musical catnip and so I stay on the treadmill for the whole twenty minutes.

Stats (gym):
Cross-trainer: 20 minutes
Rowing machine: 20 minutes
Calories: 260
Treadmill
Distance: 1.8 miles
Time: 20 minutes
Pace: 11.07 m/m
Calories: 180
Men wearing too many clothes: 1
Musical catnips: 1

The fifth day of Juneathon I cycled a bit more

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I’d arranged to meet up in Polegate with an Open University friend to go cycling. She’d found The Cuckoo Trail and printed off a map, showing a nice easy 18 mile route.

27.5 miles later we’d been through quite a few towns and villages in East Sussex, none of which having any pubs that were selling food or even open in the first place and so lunch was had at 16 miles at 6pm, sitting outside a closed pub eating sandwiches we’d bought in the petrol garage on the other side of the road.

Classy.

I got home about five hours later than intended and as the train would be getting in after the shops had shut (yes, shops shut here, it’s shocking) I asked iliketocount to buy me some wine for when I got in and so he did a special extra Juneathon trip on his bike for me and so he is my Juneathon Hero of the Day.

Stats (cycling):
Distance: 31.98 miles (including cycling to and from the station)
Time: 5:10:56
Speed: 6.2mph
Calories: 1,279
Cuckoo Trails: 1
Pubs selling food: 0
Petrol garages: 1
Shops open when I got back: 0
Juneathons completed: 5/30

On the fourth day of Juneathon, I cycled a bit

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I didn’t want to blog tonight but the control freak Judge and Independent Adjudicator said I had to, even if it was only for a couple of seconds so here’s my couple of seconds blog post.

For today’s Juneathon, I went the .37 mile extra to the station on the way to work and on the way home, after going to Tesco for some wine and strawberry beer, I went an even longer way home, thus using up valuable drinking time and therefore hardcore Juneathoning and therefore I am declaring myself the Juneathon Hero of the Day.

Stats (cycling):
Distance: 6 miles
Time: 35 minutes
Speed: 10.3 mph
Calories: 189
Extra .37 miles before work: 1
Extra 1.32 miles after work: 1
Hardcore Juneathoners: 1

The third day of Juneathon was powered by a banana smoothie

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But I think it was a broken banana as I was absolutely knackered the whole way round. I think I must have had too much sleep as I was asleep by 11pm, then wide awake at 6am, but then dozed off and didn’t wake up ‘til 9:15am after having a strange dream about the shouty Masterchef bloke that’s not bald but in my dream he wasn’t a shouty Masterchef bloke, but a Changing Rooms builder type bloke sort of like Handy Andy and I was round his house and it was on the seafront and I wondered how he could afford a nice house like that and then I was having strange dreams about drinking red wine and being a smoker again and in my dream I was really pissed off about being a smoker again and then the people I was supposed to be with went without me and I was all on my own with no way of getting home but then I woke up and had a banana smoothie as I don’t usually have any breakfast and I thought that might fuel my run and I’ll be able to go faster but after .6 of a mile I wanted to stop and I thought oh no, I can’t stop now, I want to do three miles but after three quarters of a mile I stopped to walk and then started running again and I thought of my old schoolfriend Julia who is doing Juneathon for the first time and yesterday, or was it today? ran for the first time in over a year and not only did she run for the first time in over a year, she ran 2.5 miles without stopping and she also did it in 27 minutes which I think is pretty cool and so she is my Juneathon Hero of the Day which I just made up and I get to almost two miles and the Audiofuel girl is oohing her little heart out and I’m still walking and I think if the Audiofuel girl is making all that effort then maybe I should make a bit of effort too, as when she got the Audiofuel gig she probably didn’t envisage it being the running-music of choice for middle-aged women squeezed into running clothes that are too small and so I start to run again and I go down the path and then I’m walking again and there’s a runner running towards me and I don’t want to start running in case he thinks I’m only running because he’s running and hasn’t wimped out and I wonder if maybe he’ll think I’ve just finished a twenty mile run and am just cooling down on my way home and I think probably not and as he goes past I go to say hello but he just looks away and down and I don’t want to talk to him anyway because he’s a ginger and even though he’s sweating like a ginger thing, his face is all white and lumpy and pasty like he drank too much last night and then I’ve got .5 miles to go and I think I really should run the last .5 miles but then it gets to .6 miles and I think I really should run the last .6 miles and so I do.

Stats:
Distance: 3.01 miles
Time: 37:46
Pace: 12:33 m/m
Calories: 276
Broken bananas: 1
Juneathon Heroes of the Day: 1
Audiofuel girls oohing their little hearts out: 1
Gingers: 1

And on the second day of Juneathon, I slept through my alarm

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I said to the Independent Adjudicator yesterday, can I count my cycling commute to the station and back as Juneathon? And he said no. So, after I’d finished sleeping through my alarm and cycled down to the station and got the train to Canterbury and went to work, I did some work, then left at my usual time and got the train back and got back on my bike and went a really really really really really long way home.

But by a really really really really really long way, I mean an extra 0.37 of a mile. So, not really that long at all, really.

Still, it counts as Juneathon as it was extra exercise. And if you want to complain to the Independent Adjudicator, feel free. Just remember who cooks his dinner for him every night.

Stats (cycling):
Distance: 4.82 miles
Time: 31:18
Speed: 9.2mph
Calories: 137
Alarms slept through: 1
Works gone to: 1
Juneathons completed: 2/30

On the first day of Juneathon, my true love said to me…

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‘Happy Juneathon!’

And I said ‘nnrrggnn’ and went back to sleep.

Two and a half hours later, I got out of bed, ate some fruit (a satsuma and two plums), drank a cup of Liptons Pink Citrus tea and some summer fruit flavour squash, checked my emails and Twitter and Facebook updates, put the fact that my Open University End of Course Assessment had to be posted off this afternoon and the seven hundred word commentary hadn’t been written yet, got changed and went out for the first Juneathon since the last Juneathon which was, funnily enough, last June.

Not a lot happened really. A woman with a buggy stopped to get out of my way and then I saw two men with sticks and I don’t like seeing men with sticks but then I realised they were gardening implements and they were doing some kind of gardening thing and I wondered if they were from the council as we need the council to mow the verge outside the house and then there was a cyclist on the pavement and I thought to myself ‘bollocks am I moving out of your way, you can get on the road’ and he did indeed get on the road and when I got back to the house, I’d only done two point eight miles and I wanted to do three miles so I carried on up the road a bit and I saw the cows in the sheep field and the cows and the sheep were very close together, and I didn’t know sheep and cows did mix and match and I wondered what they were talking about and then I turned round and went home and wrote the commentary for my ECA and cycled in the rain to the Post Office where the careless and reckless and totally thoughtless man behind the counter ripped the envelope when he put it on the scales but luckily I had sealed it with sellotape for extra security so it should be ok and then as I was nearly home I got back on the pavement and there was a man cycling towards me, also on the pavement and the pavement’s very narrow and I wondered how we would get past each other and the man stopped and went over to the edge and then he fell in the ditch and he fell further and further and I thought oooooooooooops, I hope he’s ok and as I got up to the man in the ditch I said ‘are you ok’ and he said ‘yes’ and I think he was a bit embarrassed and I said ‘thank you for letting me pass you, anyway’ and I cycled the rest of the way home trying not to laugh.

Stats:
Distance: 3.02 miles
Time: 32:52
Pace: 10:54 m/m
Women with buggies: 1
Men with gardening implements: 2
Cyclists on the pavement: 1
ECAs posted: 1
Men in Post Offices ripping envelopes: 1
Cyclists in ditches: 1
Fields with mix and match cows and sheep: 1
Juneathons completed: 1/30
Music:
Audiofuel

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