Category: Sheep

Janathon Day 28 – Promises, promises…

One comment

Woke up. Remembered yesterday I’d sort of promised to the Janathon community I’d run on each of the last days of Janathon. Swore a lot.

A promise is a promise though – even if it’s only a sort of promise – but I toyed with the idea of asking if I could be let off because my running shoes were still wet from yesterday’s run, but then I remembered the whole of the internet has seen my shoe rack

shoerack

so probably knows I’ve got a few spare pairs (to my shame, I’ve got running shoes I haven’t even tried on yet), then I also remembered Louise went out in damp running shoes the other day which is even more hardcore than those fifty mile ultra-marathons she takes part in and so I realised damp shoes probably aren’t a good enough excuse to back out on my sort of promise.

I had a good reason to go out though – I’d asked the Janathon sheep expert, @Jovial Gnome (who has pet sheep and assures me they are only pets and not future roast dinners), if he knew what the dumpy sheep with the squashed faces were, as there are some near me and I was too scared to Google ‘sheep with squashed faces’ for obvious reasons and he said to take a photo and he’d have a look.

So, armed with my phone, I set off on my run and when I got to the sheep field the bastard sheep were right over the other side and even if my phone had a 20x optical zoom (which it doesn’t), the bastard sheep were facing the wrong way and I’d only manage a close up of their woolly bums, which would be nice, but not what I was after.

A couple of fields down though were some more sheep facing the right way but I’m not sure if this is the same type of sheep I saw before with the squashed faces.

sheep

Still cute though. Any other sheep experts out there?

Dirty colour changing sheep

Leave a comment

I slacked at the weekend, although it would seem I’m not the only one as since the end of Juneathon, there’s hardly been any blogging going on, and therefore I would assume no running either.  Tsk.

But the unticked box on my schedule was bugging me so even though I woke up knackered due to not sleeping well and having weird dreams about ex-bosses being in Tehran (is there even such a place?) and ringing me every five minutes, I got up and told myself I was doing the four miles my schedule said I should have done at the weekend.

I look out of the window and THE SHEEP HAVE CHANGED COLOUR

and they’re no longer white and fluffy although the sheep at the back of the garden aren’t usually white and fluffy anyway, they’re usually more of a manky cream colour but they’re never actually brown.   Dirty sheep.

And so after the shock of seeing the dirty changing colour sheep I set up Cedric to pace me 11 minute miles to see if going reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllly slowly will help me to actually cover 4 miles today and my route covers the Bad Road and I hope there won’t be any falling down rabbit hole incidents today and I’ll have to be brave and ignore the cars and I go down the road and see white fluffy sheep, not dirty brown ones, and  I get to the Bad Road and I go round the bend without falling over and after the bend are cows, hurrah, and I go round the second bad bend without getting run over and there should be more cows but they’re not there and I think I only risked my life on the Bad Road so I could see cows and I only saw half the cows I should have done, bah, and I carry on going and I’m still ahead of Cedric and I’ve got two miles to go and I get round the corner and there’s a man trimming the grass on the side of the road and I’m looking a right state as it’s been raining and I’ve run two miles and I’m soaking wet and bright red and I hope he doesn’t notice me and he looks up as I pass and smiles and says morning and I think DAMN YOU, FRIENDLY VILLAGE PEOPLE and I get to the end of the road and I think if I turn left I can be home in five minutes but I’ve got a mile and a half to go and so I carry on straight and a girl on the pavement stops to let me go past and I say thanks and then I get round the corner where Costcutter is which reminds me of London as it’s run by Asians and everything and is my new favourite shop and there’s a girl on the pavement smoking and she doesn’t move out of my way and then I’ve run out of pavement anyway and I’m getting tired and I want to stop and I can hear something big behind me and I stop and let a petrol tanker or something go past and then two more cars come up behind me and then they all stop to let a truck carrying a JCB come through and I think you get some big trucks and lorries and stuff down these small country lanes and then I’m doing a mix of run/walk and Cedric’s overtaken me and I haven’t got far to go but I’m not going to catch him up and then there’s a Range Rover or something right behind me and makes me jump and I think oops, I should concentrate more, that came up slowly and then I’m back on the main road as Soft Cell start singing Sex Dwarf and I think hurrah and turn it up and then I’ve only got a few hundred feet to go and then it’s in minus numbers and I think does that mean I’ve gone over four miles now? and so I stop my Garmin and it says Cedric beat me.  Bah.

Splits

Stats:
Distance: 4.05 miles
Time: 46:18
Pace: 11:25 m/m
Calories: 351
Dirty brown colour changing sheep: some
Fluffy white sheep: some more
Friendly village people: 1
Girls on pavement stopping to let me past: 1
Girls on pavement not stopping to let me past: 1
Petrol tankers: 1
Trucks carrying JCBs: 1
Range Rovers nearly running me over: 1
Cedrics beating me: 1
Music:
Modest Mouse
Muse
Charlatans
Soft Cell

Baa, moo (learning the language of the country)

8 comments

I moved to the countryside on Saturday and I was going to go for a run yesterday but it looked a bit windy, so I stayed in instead, trying to remember the new systems of the house, such as cold drinks go in the cold drinks cupboard and hot drinks go in the hot drinks cupboard, unless they’re unopened cold drinks, then they go in the hot drinks cupboard until they’re opened, then they go into the cold drinks cupboard.  And also there is a specific space for tinned tomatoes in the cupboard and I need to learn how to close curtains properly.  And I thought he was an easy going kind of chap. 

But today I thought I would be brave and venture out and try not to get run over by a tractor or a sheep or run over by anything really and I decide to be sensible and not take my iPod so I can hear the cars coming as I’m going to have to run along those stupid roads without pavements things but I am unable to get out of the door without it and I decide to be semi-sensible and take it with me but have it on low and I can’t be bothered to wait for my Garmin to get a signal and I think it will probably be a lot quicker round here anyway so I start without it and hope I can remember where I need to turn off and after a little while my Garmin gets a signal and I carry on running and I see a turning and I think I need to go down there and I cross the road and there’s a car coming and Shaun said there wouldn’t be any cars but I don’t think he’s to be trusted anyway, as he could have told me about the cold drinks/hot drinks thing before I moved in and discovered he had OCD and then I could have stayed at home with my cupboards that are in disarray with hot and cold drinks happily intermingling and I could put the tinned tomatoes anywhere I feel like it, maybe in the hot drinks cupboard if I’m feeling particularly rebellious and then I get to a field with nothing in it

and I think what’s the point of having a field with nothing in it? there should be sheep in it and I wonder when I’ll see some sheep and just up the road there’s some lambs chasing a pigeon

and I think aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, cute, and across the road are more sheep

and I think I’m bored of sheep now and I want to see some cows but I’m not up to where the cows live yet, but there are some more lambs playing with some hay or straw or something

and then I see an escaped lamb

and I wonder how he got out and maybe I can steal him and take him home with me, as he’s cuter than the ugly sheep at the bottom of the garden and then I get to where the cows live but they’re a bit far away

and so I leave the far away cows and carry on running and then there’s another road and I don’t remember this road being here when Shaun took me out on Sunday to show me the route and I wonder if I’ve gone the wrong way and I carry on going left and don’t recognise anything because it’s all just green and looks the same everywhere and no burnt out cars or shopping trolleys to act as a landmark and seven cars come down the road and I could have sworn Shaun said I wouldn’t see any cars and I’m getting fed up of getting out of the way of cars and I can’t see round the corners and I think if a car comes round the corner I’m going to get squished and then a car does come fast round a corner and I nearly fall into a ditch full of nettles and I think I want to go home to London and run round the marshes and I don’t like the stupid countryside with its stupid pavementless roads and nowhere to run and then I’m nearly home and back on a pavement and there’s a squashed dead pigeon with no head and I wonder where its head’s gone and I get home without being run over.

Route

Stats:
Distance: 2.4 miles
Time: 31:00
Pace: 12:43 m/m
Calories: 222
Boyfriends with OCD: 1
Lambs: lots
Sheep: lots
Far away cows: lots
Pigeons with no heads: 1
Roads with pavements: 1 and a bit.