Category: Running

On the 19th day of Juneathon, I ran 5 miles

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After a very moderate Friday evening for me where I drank less than half a bottle of wine, I wake up after dreaming that my dead dad and my dead brother came to arrest me and take me away and I get up and I look on Gmap Pedometer to plot out a five mile route and I go off to do my five mile route and wonder if the path is still cut in half by waterworks but it’s not and it takes me out through a housing estate and then I’m lost but then I realise I’m not lost and I go down the path and then down the other path and back up the road and down another road and then down another road and then I’m back on my road and my five miles is going to end going up a hill and when I get to the top of the hill, I’ve done exactly five miles and I think I might as well carry on and run down the hill but it’s windy and it’s like running on the flat but I carry on anyway and I get back and I’ve done over five miles and that’s the furthest I’ve run for ages and ages and ages.

Yay.

Stats:
Distance: 5.31 miles
Time: 58:28
Pace: 11:01 m/m
Calories: 546
Moderate Friday evenings: 1
Bottles of wine drank: less than half
Dreams about dead dads and dead brothers: 1
Pathways cut in half by waterworks: 0
Paths: 2
Uphills: 1
Downhills: 1
Winds: 1
Music:
Audiofuel
Madness
Sex Pistols

On the 17th day of Juneathon, I joined the school run

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But I was the only one running.

I don’t know if it’s the Juneathon daily exercise energising me, or the home made smoothies I’ve been having for breakfast, but as well as going out for a run before 9am on Tuesday, yesterday I got up before my alarm went off and today I got up at 6:45am and was out by 8:30 (yes, I know that’s a lot of time in between getting up and leaving the house but leaving the house is hard for a wannabe hermit) and I thought I’d better stick to the pavements and cycle lanes and not those stupid country lane things with no pavements as I’m probably going to hit the school run and those school run mums don’t know how to drive and I get down the road and there’s an SRM walking her kid to school and I think flipping heck, I thought country people drove everywhere and good for her and I get to the end of the road and I see a little fat kid and I think where’s he going? the school’s the other way, he must be bunking off but then I see a load of kids in uniform and I think aah, I never noticed a school here before and it must be the secondary school as they’re in uniform and the little fat kid must be going here and not bunking off after all and I go through the path opposite the school and it’s lined with bushes and there’s two teachers in there smoking and I wonder if they’re smoking in there to deter the kids from smoking in there and then I see a house where the owners have painted their double garage doors in the England flag or George’s Cross or whatever it’s called and I think how sad is that? and they’ll have to paint over it when the football’s over and I realise I haven’t seen any cars yet with the England flags on and I get round the corner and there’s an SRM on a bike and her little girl’s on a bike too and I think that’s pretty hardcore as the primary school is quite far away and up a hill and I wonder if they’ll get up the hill on their bikes or will they wimp out and walk it and then I wonder if I’ll be cycling home tomorrow after work as I had planned to cycle home from work from now on but yesterday I didn’t really enjoy it as the first time I did it, it was like a challenge and a little adventure and it wasn’t that busy but yesterday it was busy and it was just a chore and I got really saddle sore and I think I might have to wimp out of tomorrow’s cycle commute and especially as it’s Book Club tonight and I’ll probably be really tired after going to the pub and drinking and getting back late talking about books and then I’m running down the pavement and there’s two women on bikes and I go through the middle of them and one of them wobbles and comes to a stop and I say sorry and then I wonder why I’m saying sorry as I’m on the pavement and they should be on the road and I think GET ON THE FUCKING ROAD and then I’m going down the path and I’m hoping there’s no nonces in the bushes waiting for a schoolchild to come skipping innocently down the path unaware of any nonces in bushes and I think probably not as people shouldn’t let young children out on their own, not even if you want to go to a restaurant or something while you’re on holiday and then further down the path I can see a man and he’s dressed all in black and hasn’t got a dog with him and he looks scary but then he goes down the other path and in fact, I think it’s a she not a he and then I’m back on the pavement and outside the school are about a dozen cars with England flags on them and I think if I was a kid, I’d probably be excited to be driven about in a car with England flags on it and it’d be far less embarrassing than the bright orange Citroen 2CV

citroen

I was driven to school in and it’s not even like my mum was an old hippy or anything, she was completely conservative and totally Tory to the point of having Conservative Party posters in the windows of the house in the 70s, so now you know who to blame for Margaret Thatcher being in power and then I get home and my Hal Higdon Half Marathon Training Program says to do strength training so I do some weights and while I’m lying down doing some bench presses, I look at the dead spiders trapped in the roof of the conservatory.

Stats:
Distance: 3.03 miles
Time: 32:20
Pace: 10:39 m/m
Calories: 312
Early mornings: 1
SRMs walking: 1
Little fat kids: 1
Teachers smoking in the bushes: 2
Double garage doors painted with England flags: 2
SRMs on bikes: 1
Cyclings on pavement: 2
Nonces in bushes: 0
Dead spiders in conservatory roofs: lots
Music:
Audiofuel
The Mission
The Clash
XTC

On the 15th day of Juneathon, we’re halfway there!

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juneathon_2010Here’s my pretty chart of my halfway mark. Who’d have thought I’d turn into a cyclist?!! Thanks to The Red Bucket for posting one on his blog and allowing me to nick the idea. You can make your own on Google Docs. It would be prettier though if I could change the colours. Does anyone know how to do this?

No cycling for me today though. Today I got up early and plotted a 3 mile route on Gmap Pedometer and was out of the door by 9am (that’s early for me these days, so shut up) and started off up the hill and got about three feet up the hill before deciding to walk and I did my run with a bit of walking in it and nothing very exciting happened and as I got to 2.4 miles I thought no way is it .6 miles back to the house and it’s going to be more like 2.7 miles and Gmap Pedometer must be lying and when I got back to the house it was indeed 2.7 miles and I thought well, I’m not going up the hill again to make up the mileage so today’s run is only 2.7 miles and not the 3 that the Hal Higdon Half Marathon Training Program had me down to do today.

Stats:
Distance: 2.72 miles
Time: 29:20
Pace: 10:48 m/m
Calories: 279
Pretty charts of the halfway mark: 1
Lying Gmap Pedometers: 1
Hal Higdon Half Marathon Training Programs: 1
Halfway through Juneathons: 1
Music
Audiofuel
MGMT
Joy Division

On the 12th day of Juneathon, I ran to the new Juneathon 2010 Audiofuel mix

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Junathon2010Mix That nice Sean man from Audiofuel (I would call him that nice young Sean man but I have since found out he’s older than me) has made us lucky Juneathoners a new mid-Juneathon 2010 mix for us all. Yay.

You can download it for free here.

I took it out for a test run and very good it is too. I even had a laugh out loud in the street moment when, at 18 minutes into it, Sean says ‘well done on the run and don’t forget to blog about it when you get home’.

Um, I didn’t forget to blog, I just didn’t blog.

Until now.

Oops.

Sorry.

On the 10th day of Juneathon, I did the Crisis Square Mile Run

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Yes, I’m late with this. I’m also late with days 11, 12, 13 and 14, so this is going to be short.

Crisis Square Mile Run 2010 highlights:

  • Meeting Fit Artist for the first time
  • Meeting up with Eating Trees for the second time
  • A little girl running alongside me for a little while
  • My fastest mile in a race, ever (I think)
  • Beer
  • Pizza
  • More beer

Lowlights:

  • Stupid girl barging me on the bridge at the finish
  • Missing Fit Artist at the finish line
  • Having to leave the pub to get the train home

crisis 002

Stats:
Distance: 4.47 miles
Time: 45:29
Pace: 10:11 m/m

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

greensands way 023

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)

greensands way 024

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

greensands way 025

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

greensands way 026

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

greensands way 027

and then another little bridge type thing

greensands way 028

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

greensands way 029

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

greensands way 030

and there’s quite a nice view

greensands way 032

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

greensands way 033

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

greensands way 035

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

greensands way 036

and so I decide to go back the way I came

greensands way 037

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

greensands way 038

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 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

Stupid bloody poxy snow

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My plans for an outdoor three miles this morning were scuppered by the stupid bloody poxy snow that made a reappearance yesterday, continuing through the night and leaving me with this view

snow 003

outside the front door this morning.  Pretty, it may be, but it was snowing pretty heavily and I didn’t fancy my chances of staying upright in it, so I took myself off to the gym instead.

The gym was empty but there was a man walking on the outside treadmill and I didn’t want to go on the other outside one as it’s in kilometres, not miles (although the one he was on was in kilometres the other day too, which it never used to be, so I hope they’re not going to also change the one remaining treadmill that counts in proper money) so I went on the one next to him and told it I wanted to do three miles and off I went, quite slowly as I was tired today, and then a pikey woman started walking on the treadmill next to me and her fat pikey child was on the elliptical trainer next to her and I thought what’s a child doing in here, it’s not a playground and then I wondered if maybe the school was shut due to the stupid bloody poxy snow and it was probably better that she brought her little porker with her to the gym instead of taking it to Starbucks across the road and fed it pastries although that was probably where they were going next and I’m running and running on the treadmill and the pikey woman is walking and walking and I eventually do my three miles and I go on the rowing machine and then I do some weights and the only other person in the gym by then is a man doing weights and he’s left his towel, diary and water bottle on the seat of one of the leg weights machines and I wonder if he thinks it’s a table and I don’t want to ask him to move them and so I only do upper body stuff and then I go home and have broccoli and stilton soup which was voted for over potato and leek by some Twitter friends.

Stats:
Distance: 3 miles
Time: 32:42
Pace: 10:54
Calories: 311
Men walking on treadmills: 1
Women walking on treadmills: 1
Kids confusing gyms with playgrounds: 1
Men confusing weight machines with tables: 1
Music:
Detholz
Cardiacs
Blur
Julian Casablancas
White Rabbits

Two on the treadmill

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I went to the gym today to do my two miles and I thought it’ll be busy in there as it’s Monday and everyone will be panicking about the half a glass of wine and packet of crisps that they consumed over the weekend and will be cycling furiously trying to burn it off but when I get there, there’s only two people in there and I wonder where all the Monday people are and I also wonder if all the New Year newbies have fucked off now and I think yay, I get the place to myself then, result and I go to the changing room that only I seem to use and I put my stuff in the locker that only I seem to use and go back into the gym and there’s a man walking on a treadmill and so I do the British thing and get on a treadmill further away, leaving a respectable gap between us but the screen’s in kilometres and I don’t want kilometres, I want miles and so I get on the treadmill next to the man and this one’s in miles and I think hurrah and I do my two miles and then I decide to go on the rowing machine and the pacing man is doing his pacing round between weights thing that’s really annoying and I wish he’d just sit down and count to thirty or whatever in between sets instead of walking around the gym and two women come in and they start walking on the treadmill but after about ten minutes lo! they actually start to run on it and I’ve only ever seen one person run on the treadmill in the gym before and the old man who showed me how to use one of the weights machines comes in and sits on his favourite machine, the back machine or whatever it is and I wonder where the old lady who I used to talk to in the New Year is as I haven’t seen her for ages and I used to see her every time I went to the gym and I wonder if she was just a New Year newbie and has lost interest and then I go on the bike even though the bike is very very boring and although I haven’t got my glasses on, I can just about make out that prick Gok Wan or whatever his name is on the telly and I finish on the bike and I go into the changing rooms and someone’s left their stuff on the bench and I wonder why they don’t use the lockers, they are free after all and then I go home and tomorrow I will go back to the gym and then on Thursday, I will run outside for three miles in my new running shoes.

Stats:
Distance: 2 miles
Time: 20:44
Pace: 10:22
Calories: 207
Men walking on treadmills: 1
Women running on treadmills: 3
Men pacing about between weights sets: 1
Old men on their favourite machines: 1
Old ladies who used to go to the gym every day: 0
Pricks called Gok Wan: 1
Pairs of new running shoes: 1
Music:
Detholz
Cardiacs
Silvery
Blur

Return of the slacker

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As you know, I hated running in Headcorn.  I hated running in the stupid country lanes with their stupid no pavement thing and stupid holes in the roads thing and their stupid sharp bends and so I practically gave up running there.  Now we’ve moved to Ashford and although there are country lanes if I want them, there are also miles and miles of pavements and cycle lanes.  Miles and miles of pavements might sound a crap place to run, but it’s not London and there’s not a side street every three feet and there are a lot of fields around so it means I get the scenery and I get to have my ipod up as loud as I like without worrying about the traffic.

Result.

More specifically, the result is that I have been running on a regular basis.

As I’d practically given up running in Headcorn, my fitness was down a massive amount but when we moved, I found a gym just five minutes’ walk up the road where the membership is only £20 a month.  Yippee.  So with my fitness building up in the gym, I got myself a beginner’s schedule from the Runner’s World website and have been sticking to it for the last three weeks and I am now up to a comfortable(ish) four miles.  I’m even going to be doing the Isle of Oxney Hot Soup Dash in two weeks.  And I’m not only doing it for the free soup (even if I did email the organiser to ask if the soup would be vegetarian [the nice man said he’d make sure there was some vegetarian soup for me]).

So, I’m sorry for the slacking on the running front and the blogging front.  And if any of you nice PR people who keep sending me stuff to review are reading, I’ll review your products soon.

My next run is scheduled for tomorrow and I’m down to run two miles.  This will be done on the treadmill as my gym membership only allows me to go during the hours of 9am and 4pm and I stupidly went and got a part-time job which means I have to get my value for money on the days I’m not working but it’s only a temporary job so I can go back to being a full-time idle layabout in a few weeks.

Hurrah.

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