Category: Juneathon

Travelling Hopefully (Cassie) and Rich are currently on their yearly camping holiday to somewhere near Dymchurch (my first words on meeting Rich were ‘Ooh, you’re taller than I expected!’. Why can’t I just say ‘Hello, nice to meet you’, like a normal person would?) and so as Shaun and I are only a few miles away, we arranged to meet up at the Blue Anchor in Ruckinge for dinner (Helen was also supposed to be there but had to pull out, unfortunately).

All the meals in the Blue Anchor come with salad or vegetables and a choice of potato. We all chose chips. In our defence, we did also all choose salad too. Cassie and Rich had been warned about the stupidly big portions the pub serves, but they still weren’t prepared for the mountain of food that the waitress placed in front of them (especially Rich’s inch thick piece of ham). The waitress forgot Cassie’s chips, but that was just as well as between us, we left enough chips to feed the population of Ashford for a few days.

At the end of the evening, Shaun gave Cassie and Rich a lift back to their campsite and just after dropping them off, a hare scampered across the road. I’ve never seen a hare before and gave a sharp intake of breath and exclaimed ‘What was that?’ I didn’t know hares were the size of foxes, I thought they were the same as rabbits but with longer ears. Yes, I am stupid.

A couple of miles on down the road more sharp intakes of breath could be heard as suicidal rabbits ran out in the road in front of the car, although Shaun reckoned it was the same rabbit taking shortcuts through the fields just to run out in front of us again. I’m not sure he is to be believed though as what was a ten minute journey on the way to the pub, turned into a half hour journey on the way back due to Shaun ignoring my ‘Why don’t you just go back the way we came?’ remark and going on a detour down to Dymchurch where I didn’t even get to see the sea but had to endure more twisty and turny narrow country lanes at a speed faster than I’m happy with, despite my pleas of ‘please slow down’.

Still, we eventually got back safe and sound and with all the carbs from the pasta, chips and lager, I didn’t think I had much choice but to stick to my schedule this morning and go out for 4.5 miles.

It was boiling when I went out and so I put on a vest top instead of one of my usual t-shirts and laughed inwardly at a) the runner running in long baggy trousers; b) the scruffy man looking at the horses by the vets wearing jeans and a jacket; and c) the man in a suit and tie cycling down the dual carriageway and I wondered if I was hallucinating the sunshine and if they were all laughing at me for being underdressed but after about three miles, the rain started to wash off the sun lotion I had applied (although how effective it will be, being about ten years old, I’m not sure) and as just as I got back inside the front door, the promised storm arrived so maybe they were dressed appropriately after all.

Stats
Distance: 4.19 miles
Time: slow
Pace: slow
Calories: 390
Chips: billions 
Sunshines: 1
Storms: 1

And it makes me smile.

Before I went out on my ‘run’ today, I had the urge to listen to this

first which also further delayed my run as I knew it wasn’t on my iPod and so I had to find the CD and I found it eventually and whacked it up loud and then went for a run in the sun.

Stats
Distance: 0.73 miles
Time: 7:17
Pace: 9:58
Calories: 77
Suns: 1

Today’s excuse for only running .75 miles is that I’m doing the Staplehurst 10k tomorrow and nothing to do with the amount I drank last night.

Stats
Distance: 0.75 miles
Time: 7:33
Pace: 10:00 m/m
Races tomorrow: 1
Amount I drank last night: lots

But just a bit because although I have notes of my run and I was going to post a photo of some lovely socks that came in the post today, I can’t be arsed to blog.

Sorry.

I will post a pic of the socks some other time though, as they are very nice indeed.

Stats
Distance: 4.01 miles
Time: 51:05
Pace: 12:44
Calories: 378
Jogs: 1
Logs: 1
Bits of blogs: 1
Pairs of socks: 1

I woke up from a nice dream about cows just as Shaun was going to work and as I was quite nicely awake, I thought I’d get up and see if I could manage to do a run at a decent hour of the morning and not a time approaching lunchtime.

So I did. At 7:30am I was out the door, thinking I was very hardcore, until I remembered that someone recently had been for their Juneathon run at 4:15am.

I didn’t want to run on the isolated trails at that time of the morning and I definitely didn’t want to risk running into any school run mums with their very dubious driving skills along pavement-less lanes and so I had a look at a previous four mile run and, hurrah! apart from the first quarter of a mile, it was all on cycle paths and footpaths and so I set off being careful for the first quarter of a mile and didn’t get run over by any school run mums putting on their make up or lighting cigarettes or whatever else it is they do instead of LOOKING AT THE FUCKING ROAD and I get safely onto the cycle path and along the road and there’s quite a few people walking their dogs and schoolkids walking to school and I go through the field and there’s a sign on the sheep field with a picture of a sheep that looks like it’s had a chunk bitten out of it and the sign says this is what can happen if you let your dog worry sheep and I think that sheep looks more than worried, it looks pretty pissed off and maybe they shouldn’t put sheep in fields where people are allowed to walk their dogs but I never see any dogs off their leads here anyway as they’re all evil countryside devil dogs and I get back before 8:30 and I’m showered and hair washed and dressed before the postie’s been and he’ll probably have a heart attack if I answer the door to him wearing something other than a) my dressing gown; or b) my running gear.

Stats
Distance: 3.85 miles
Time: 47:45
Pace: 12:23
Calories: 376
Dreams of cows: 1
Up earlies: 1
School run mums: 0
People walking their dogs: some
Pictures of pissed off sheep: 1
Posties with heart attacks: 1

Today’s effort was my feeble little three quarters of a mile route. I saw more people than I usually do in a proper run though. There was a man taking his dogs into the park, two people sitting on a bench next to a man in a wheelchair, then I passed an old lady and a girl with a baby and a woman trying to cross the road with a man in a wheelchair.

You can tell I’ve been out of London for too long, when I start thinking eight people is busy. I’m off to Camden on Thursday where I’ll probably see more than eight people.

Stats
Distance: 0.77 miles
Time: 8:15
Pace: 10:43
Calories: 80
People seen: 8
People I will see on Thursday in Camden: more than 8

Had I not had a friend stay over last night that we escorted to Headcorn this morning, and had I not gone to the supermarket afterwards, I would probably still be in my dressing gown, so the title isn’t actually accurate.

But today’s effort was a run round the garden. But at least I did run it this time, despite what the pace says. I started off doing just the back garden, then went back inside and asked Shaun if 291 feet counted as a run, but he said no, I’d have to run round the front garden too, so back outside I went.

Did I feel like a total tit running round the front garden? Oh yes.

Stats
Distance: 0.11 miles
Time: 1:45
Pace: 16:30
Calories: 8
Back gardens run round: 1
Front gardens run round: 1
Mes feeling stupid: 1

I was going to go out for a run in the rain but when I got outside the rain stopped and the sun came out and I ran in the sun but then the rain came, along with the wind and I ran past the lake and the water was very very high and I ran past some fishermen and I hoped I disturbed all the fish so the fishes swam away and didn’t get murdered and although I did actually run most of the way, my time was very very slow.

Stats
Distance: 6.31 miles
Time: 1:17:16
Pace: 12:15
Calories: 626
Sun: some
Wind: some
Rain: more
Murdered fish: none I hope
Juneathons completed: 18/18

This week’s diet has consisted of this:

Monday: Smoothie for breakfast, salad for lunch, BBQ fillet thingy, potatoes and cabbage for dinner

Tuesday: Smoothie for breakfast, pizza and garlic doughballs for lunch at Pizza Express with Helen, beer for dinner

Wednesday: Smoothie for breakfast, salad for lunch, wine for dinner

Thursday: Smoothie for breakfast, salad for lunch, wine for dinner

If you swap the smoothie for a cigarette and swap the salad for a sandwich (except for the weekend when I didn’t have lunch either), this was pretty much my diet for the whole of my 20s. Now I’m a bit older, I am aware that this diet isn’t very conducive to, well, anything really but especially running.

But it’s Juneathon and so I have been out for a run in the rain where I got soaked in a different kind of way.

No alcohol is involved next week until Thursday, so I should get my mileage back up again then.

Stats
Distance: .77 miles
Time: 7:45
Pace: 10:05 m/m
Calories: 80
Healthy diets: 0
Juneathons completed: 17/17