Author: jogblog

I know this should be on my other blog and it will be at some point but I’m so excited I could burst and I want to tell everyone NOW!

I actually wanted to tell everyone yesterday when I got the email saying I’d been chosen as one of the authors to have their story featured in an ebook but I was sworn to secrecy until it had been formally announced.

Caroline Smailes (author of In Search of Adam and Like Bees to Honey) organised a challenge to celebrate the launch of XBox Live TV and its integration with YouTube.

Authors were invited to submit a 100 word story inspired by a song on YouTube. The stories chosen will be published as an ebook on Amazon, with all money collected going to the charity One in Four; a registered charity which provides support and resources to people who have experienced sexual abuse and sexual violence.

And my story Dirty Boy (inspired by the song of the same title by Cardiacs) was picked! I’m going to be in a book and it’s going to be professionally edited and have a professional cover and everything! Yay for me! I’m so excited! (You can tell this by the number of exclamation marks.) You can see the whole list of authors here.

Oh, and I went to the gym and did stuff for Janathon.

Stats
Ebooks I’m going to have a story in: 1
Exclamation marks signifying my excitement: 5
Stuff done down the gym for Janathon: cycling, rowing machine, cross-trainer, body pump class

I can’t remember why, but I asked Shaun to wake me up early this morning (he does this by putting the bedroom light on when he goes to work. I do have a fake sunrise but that only stays on for 10 minutes and I can quite easily ignore my alarm for much longer than 10 minutes) and when he woke me up, I apologised to him for having a dream where I went to meet another man. I didn’t even want to meet this man because he was boring and he had bought me a grey dress for my birthday that I didn’t like (he had also bought me a book but I don’t know what book it was as I didn’t bother taking it out of the plastic bag) but I had arranged to, so I went out to see him and he wanted to go to the pictures but I didn’t want to and so he said dinner or drinks then? and I said both but he said he couldn’t afford to do both and so I said ok, we’ll go for a quick drink and I didn’t have any make up on but I thought I’d only be out for an hour so it didn’t really matter and I wanted to go a certain way, away from any pubs Shaun might be in (yeah, because he’s always out on pub crawls…) and so I followed the boring man and we were walking and walking and then he led me into a deserted house and he kept me in a room for 364 days and then he put the TV on and there were people on the screen that he had filmed and he had put Sellotape on their toes and I thought oh no, he’s going to put Sellotape on my toes and I wondered what would happen the next day, as then I would have been kept hostage for a year, but I woke up.

Anyway, after I got up and tried not to feel guilty about going to meet another man in my dream, I started to look forward to going for a run in the dark. Although, then it occurred to me that I didn’t have a route that’s only on pavements and I didn’t want to run down deserted trails or country lanes in the dark and so I looked on Google Maps for a route (after misreading ‘zoomable maps’ as ‘zombie maps’) and found a 2.5ish mile route that was purely on the pavement but by the time I’d finished drinking my tea, the sun was coming up and so I thought, fine, I’ll go for a run while the sun is rising then, that’ll be cool and I hurried up and got out and the sky was a nice pinky colour and I wondered if I should go back and get my camera and take a photo of the sunrise but decided not to in case it got light and it would be a waste of putting on my new hi-vis vest that I won from Women’s Running Magazine and so I started running and there were a lot of people around going to school or going to work or going to wherever it was they were going and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark came on my iPod which reminded me of a joke, and as some other bloggers have also been doing a jokeathon along with Janathon, I thought I’d share my joke with you:

Q: What do you call a man with a bird of prey on each shoulder who cleans his house with the lights off?

A: Hawk-kestrel-man-hoovers-in-the-dark

which is probably the best joke in the world (or to be more accurate, the only joke I know except for ‘A seal walks into a club’) and then I carry on running and I see a Kermit-green old-style Beetle and when I see Beetles it makes me want to learn to drive just so I can get one although I wouldn’t want a Kermit-green one but a yellow one or an orange one and then as it’s getting light I wonder if I should go through the titchy tiny park to see some grass and water but that would mean deviating from the route I’ve got in my head and I don’t like deviating from things but then I decide I WILL REBEL. I WILL DEVIATE and I go through the titchy tiny park and get home and it’s only just gone past 8am and I’m showered and hair washed and dressed by 9am and this is because I am skill.

Stats
Distance: 2.39 miles
Time: longer than it should take
Pace: slooooooooooooooooooooow
Calories: 251
Dreams about bad men who kidnap me and tape my toes up: 1
Sunrises: 1
Zombie maps: 1
Hi-vis jackets: 1
Jokes: 1
Deviations: 1
Minutes after 9am I’m still undressed: 0

Music
Roxy Music
Cardiacs
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Ben Folds Five
Los Campesinos

Because we were having a long day after an early start at uni yesterday, I’d booked the lunchtime spin class instead of my usual morning one as I wasn’t sure I would be up early enough. As it happened, I was up at a respectable hour (a respectable hour for a student – in fact, a shockingly early time for a student – anyway) and I could have made the earlier class. Determined not to waste the morning checking emails and talking to people on Facebook and Twitter, I fired up my Freedom software (the best piece of software ever for procrastinators) and told it to disconnect from the internet for two hours (by which time I’d be safely in the gym) and settled down to read Persuasion by Jane Austen which our fiction tutor is forcing us to read (I only got about a third of the way through Pride and Prejudice before chucking it in the bin turning off my Kindle).

While I was reading, the postman turned up bearing oaty gifts.

These flapjacks are from Travelling Hopefully. Travelling Hopefully makes the most delicious, moist, chewy and buttery flapjacks in the world ever. Fuck ‘unofficial Janathon training fuel’, I am declaring these compulsory!

Also in the post was the DVD of School of Rock which we were supposed to watch during the Christmas holidays as part of our drama homework, but I forgot about it until a few days before we were going back. (Our non-fiction tutor will almost undoubtedly ask us what we read over the holidays. I’m not sure my answer of ‘wine labels, mostly’ will be considered an acceptable response.)

The third package in the post was shoebox shaped and I got excited thinking it was a pair of running shoes that I’d ordered and forgotten about but then I saw that it wasn’t addressed to me. Bah.

Thankfully, opening the post didn’t give me any time to get back to Jane Flipping Boring as Hell Austen and I set off for the gym (which I can assure you that – unlike the gym featured on Channel 4’s The Fat Fighters – is not full of 6ft females with perfect skin and 22 inch waists).

I warmed up by doing 20 minutes on the rowing machine and 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer, then headed off for the spin class. I didn’t know who was doing the class today and hoped it wasn’t the shimmy shimmy clap clap instructor. Well, yes, of course, the shimmy shimmy clap clap instructor came along to take the class. And what a packed class it was. Every single bike was used. I’ve never seen a spin class so busy. Did everyone take the day off work today because it was unseasonably sunny? And then use that day off to go to the gym where the sun doesn’t shine? Possibly, I wouldn’t put anything past people in Ashford (I told my new tutor yesterday I lived in Ashford and she wrinkled her nose).

And so the class shimmied and clapped and dipped and dived and stood up and sat down and leaned from side to side, while I only took part in the sitting down and standing up bit. I am only able to follow the body pump instructor because it involves either doing things with your arms or doing things with your legs but not both at the same time. I am not cut out for bicycle aerobics. I am especially not cut out for waving my gym towel round my head and saying ‘woo’.

I decided to ignore all the shimmying and clapping and just do my own thing and eventually it was all over and I went to the changing rooms and there was a girl in front of me also going in and she held the door open for me and I said thank you and then I thought oh no, there are two more doors coming up in quick succession, what’s the etiquette if someone holds open three doors for you in the same number of seconds? Do you say thank you three times, or is saying it only the first time adequate manners and the other two go without saying? Because I’d already said thank you at the first door, I said ‘ta’ at the second door, then smiled at her at the third door and thought that was probably polite enough and I don’t think I ever thought what a flipping minefield manners are before.

Tomorrow’s exercise was going to be a run. Then I texted a friend to ask that as we were going to see each other on Friday, shall we postpone our lunch tomorrow and she said we were supposed to be meeting next week. (Each time I text her to see what time we’re meeting, she tells me I’ve got the week wrong and it’s the week after we’re meeting. I think we need to clarify what ‘next [weekday]’ means. Just as well I am one of life’s confirmers and I confirm any arrangements to meet up nearly every day leading up to the arranged (or what I think is the arranged) date). Anyway, after telling me that I’d got the date wrong, she reminded me that I was going to cycle to uni on Thursdays and now I could cycle this week after all. But I’d decided on a run and I can’t do both and although I had planned on cycling to uni on Thursdays I hadn’t planned to this week and I don’t like changing what I’ve arranged in my head to do. But I have got Paddock Wood Half coming up and I need to train for that and I haven’t run at all this week, so maybe running would be the best thing.

And if you’re wondering why this blog post is so long, it’s because our fiction tutor told us we must write 1000 words a day, that’s why.

Stats
Cycling: 5 miles
Rowing machine: 20 minutes
Elliptical-trainer: 20 minutes
Spin class: 45 minutes
Oaty gifts of flapjacks: 1
School of Rock DVDs: 1
Packages not for me: 1
Instructors waving gym towels round their heads saying ‘woo’: 1
Words: 1000

Back to uni today. Back to uni really early, too. A 9am start? What kind of time is that to start us all off with after a month off? And not only a 9am start, but a 5:30pm finish (which was spent at the end of the platform at Folkestone Central with a nutter singing and dancing to Michael Jackson. The song that goes ‘Annie are you [something or other]’ – you know the one. He was moonwalking and all sorts in front of me. V. annoying.

Still, although it was a long day, we did have a 2.5 hour break in between fiction and drama (oh, as well as the 45 minute break in the morning and the 20 minute ‘go outside and look at stuff and observe and write it down’ thing we also had).

In my 2.5 hour break, I decided to go for a walk down the beach. I saw Dungeness in the distance

and although walking that way was a bit gloomy, when me and my uni pal Lisa (who does a fab Zombie blog here) turned round to head back, it was lovely and sunny.

The only downside of today was our new fiction tutor telling us we have to read some Jane Austen.

Bah.

Stats
I haven’t got the hang of my new Garmin yet, but in total, I cycled and walked 8.71 miles.

After I blogged about my #plankaday yesterday, Warriorwoman decided she’d have a go too and managed 35 seconds. I congratulated her on Twitter for lasting longer than me and she admitted that beating me had been her target. Hmm, I said, like that is it? Ok then, well, I said, tomorrow I’m going to do a minute.

And I did. 1 minute 2 seconds. Ha!

Stats
Plank time: 1:02
Warriorwoman’s beaten: 1

I’ve seen people tweeting #plankaday (sorry Shaun. Shaun HATES seeing hashtags) for a while now and kept wanting to join in, but kept putting it off. Which is stupid really, because planking doesn’t take very long. Especially for me. I am the first to collapse in a heap or cheat and go onto my knees when we do the plank in body pump. I did try to get out of it yesterday by claiming that I had just had a shower and had clean clothes on but Rachel said that was no excuse. So I did my first #plankaday yesterday and kept it going for a whopping 19.6 seconds. Today I managed 31.5. Whoop. If you don’t know what planking is or want to find out more about #plankaday, you can find out here.

But I haven’t just plankathoned for Janathon as that would be really feeble. I also cycled 7ish miles by taking the very long way round to the farm shop (which is only a mile away).

Stats
Plank: 31.5 seconds
Cycling: 7.82 miles

I woke up feeling slightly achy after doing body pump yesterday but nowhere near as achy as I was expecting. Shaun said this is because I wore my Trion:Z. He’ll be reading his horoscopes next.

I wasn’t really sure about running on achy legs but thought I’d probably be ok and I had promised myself that I would run 3 miles today even if ‘run’ turned out to be more of a ‘stroll’.

The first half a mile was a struggle and I told myself I could walk after a mile but I got to a mile and carried on and only stopped when I got to the ditch full of water and I didn’t want to get my shoes wet as the Kent muddy water makes my shoes go hard and give me blisters (unlike the London water which doesn’t) and so I stood there for a while trying to see which was the shallowest bit and I wondered if I could tightrope walk over the bit of metal railing that was also in the ditch along with the rubbish and shopping trollies and I decided that tightrope walking probably wasn’t the best idea seeing as I have trouble balancing at the best of times and so I kind of step stoned across the railing onto the other side of the ditch and managed not to fall over and I ran down the grassy bank and walked up the slopey bit and looked at my Garmin which told me I was going really slowly and I thought I’m really slow but hey ho at least I’m on the go and wondered if that should go in my poetry portfolio but decided against it and carried on and through the housing estate and down the trail and there was a man standing by the gate and I wondered why he was just standing there but then I caught a glimpse of a hi-vis bit and thought maybe he was another runner and when I got closer I saw it was the ginger man I’ve seen out running a few times and he was stretching and he smiled and said morning or at least that’s what my lip reading skills told me he said and I carried on past the sheep field but the sheep weren’t there and I started walking and told myself I’ll start running again when I got to the gate and then I thought there’s no reason to wait until I get to the gate and I started running again and I was on the uphill bit then I saw the letterbox which signifies the start of the downhill bit and I ran down the hill and my Garmin said I’d done 2.9 miles and so I wanted to round it up to 3 and ran past the house and up to the gap that leads up to the end of the garden and that took me up to 3 miles and Shaun was up a tree cutting the branches off and I said look, I’ve done 3 miles and most of it was running, yay.

Stats
Distance: 3.01 miles
Time: slow
Pace: slow
Calories: 284
Hocus pocus believing boyfriends: 1
Ginger men: 1
Sheep: 0

Music
Erasure
Philip Glass
Hole
Rage Against the Machine

Shaun put on his Trion:Z the other day then said how good he felt after a run and how it must be due to the bracelet. I said he didn’t believe in all that hocus pocus and he agreed with me but then said I must put mine back on again anyway. Ooh, I thought, things did start to go downhill after I stopped wearing it. Maybe my running has been so crap because I stopped wearing the magic bracelet and nothing at all to do with the fact that I stopped running or going to the gym regularly a few months ago.

After doing spin yesterday for the first time in months, my legs had been aching all afternoon but this morning, after putting on the Trion:Z last night, my legs were fine. So, I say ‘pah’ to your hocus pocus, the Trion:Z is indeed a magic bracelet with hidden super powers. (For the funniest blog post ever about these magic bracelets, see Notmuchofarunner’s blog post from last Juneathon.)

Because I was so rejuvenated and fully charged with magnetic electrode ions and stuff, I skipped out of bed as soon as my alarm went off this morning. Ok, I ignored my alarm and got up two hours later than planned, but I did get out of the house in a record-breaking 40 minutes after getting up and cycled down to the gym for my body pump class.

I got there with enough time for ten minutes warm up on the rowing machine then went over to the studio where the classes are held. Usually there’s a queue of people waiting to get in while the previous class finishes, but today there was no one there and people were coming out of the studio. Peeking through the window in the door, I could see some familiar faces in there from when I regularly went to body pump before I started uni, so I thought the time of the previous class must have changed and so I went in, striding through the class looking for a space. Then I realised that there were only mats on the floor and no benches or weights. Then I realised that everyone was looking at me. Then I realised that the previous class hadn’t finished and I’d just walked through the middle of a body balance class. Hoping no one had noticed me, I turned round and walked back out with my head down and stood outside for bit wondering if I could face going back in again at the appropriate time or maybe I should just go home and die of shame but I decided to be brave and stick around for the body pump class. After nipping off quickly to get some more water, I returned to the studio and waited outside like a normal person for the class to finish before going in.

Once inside, I got my usual spot by the pillar (so I can use it to help me balance when we’re doing the bending one leg up with one hand thing) and got my weights.

I hadn’t been for ages and although there were lots of familiar faces, I was hoping no one thought I was a New Year Noob and I wanted to shout out I’M NOT A NEW YEAR NOOB, I’VE BEEN STUDYING LINGUISTICS ON A FRIDAY MORNING SINCE SEPTEMBER AND BELIEVE ME COMING TO BODY PUMP WOULD BE FAR MORE FUN THAN LEARNING ABOUT MORPHEMES AND ADVERBIALS* but I managed to remember all the moves and keep in time to the instructor and apart from the bit where we have to lay on our backs and the abs bit, it was great fun. I love body pump.

Then I went back into the gym and did 20 minutes on the rowing machine and 20 minutes on the elliptical-trainer.

Stats
Cycling: 5.11 miles
Rowing machine: 30 minutes
Elliptical trainer: 20 minutes
Body pump: 45 minutes
People striding through an ongoing gym class: 1
New Year Noobs: 0

*There is such a thing as an adverbial, even if Shaun says my tutor is talking bollocks and making up words. Just don’t ask me what one is, as I’ve forgotten, even if I did get a 2:1 for my essay (just thought I’d stick that bit in…).

It’s only taken me until day 4 but today I got dressed in my running gear, took my Garmin outside to get a signal and waited for the accuracy thing to get under 40ft while I stood there with The Cure’s ‘Accuracy’ in my head.

When it was ready, I switched my iPod on and appropriately enough, the first track to come on was the Audiofuel Juneathon mix (I think a Juneathon mix is appropriate enough for Janathon, don’t you?) and so I started off on my run and dragged myself slowly round my  usual 1.5 mile route and got home and thought yes, I really must defer my Virgin London Marathon place.

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. The initial europhoria of getting the happy face magazine landing on the doormat wore off quicker than half a Junior Disprin when I thought about the crappy times I’d done for my recent two half-marathons and the amount of training it would entail. But I had six months to train and it wasn’t like I was a complete newbie and after getting some encouraging comments from people, felt inspired again to train for it, especially when I won a wonderful prize from Sole UK, which consisted of them adopting me and providing me with running gear, a personal trainer, nutritionist, gym membership and loads of other stuff to get me ready for 22nd April.

As assignment deadlines loomed and I caught three colds in two months, my training slacked off. Then it was my birthday which was spent in Paris, then Christmas, then New Year and my training ground to a halt as I spent more time in the pub than in the gym and so today I decided that there was no way I would be able to train properly and do the marathon and Sole UK justice and I would be deferring my place.

Still, this gives me over a year to get my training back to how it should be and have already thought about maybe training for the Paddock Wood Half instead (warning: clicking on the link will transport you back to the 90s).

Stats
Distance: 1.55 miles
Time: 18:08
Pace: 11:44 m/m
Calories: 162
Juneathon mixes: 1
VLM places deferred: 1