And the winner of Juneathon is…

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… sorry, you’ll have to wait ’til tomorrow!

I didn’t realise it was going to be such a difficult decision, but I’m going to confer, consult, discuss, adjudicate, deliberate and make a pissed informed decision about it in the pub tonight and announce the winner tomorrow.

Stats:
Juneathon winners announced: 0
Bloggers taking a long time to make up their mind and wishing she hadn’t been given the responsibility of choosing the winner in the first flipping place: 1

The last day of Juneathon

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As it’s the last day of Juneathon, it would be illegal not to run, or at least it should be and so I look at Hal Higdon’s half marathon training program to see if that gives me some motivation as I’m doing the Royal Parks Half in 15 weeks and the earlier I start training the better and the schedule does indeed give me some motivation, especially as it’s got days for strength training (Mon, Thu) which I can do with Shaun’s weights and days for cross-training (Wed, Sat), which I can do on my bike or rowing machine.  I might even fit some running in between, too (Tue, Thu and Sun, according to Hal).

I was sent a new running watch to try so I have a bit of a play with that before I leave the house but it seems very complicated and needs to know my stride length and stuff and I can’t even find out how to make it start recording and it’s supposed to beep when it’s ready and I haven’t heard it beep but I don’t really want to spend hours making it work so I decide just to leave it on it’s pre-programmed settings for now and see what it says and work out how to use it properly later and so I go out looking like a freak with a running watch on one wrist and my trusty old Garmin on the other and I pick up the garage key and think duh, I’m not going cycling, I’m going running and I must be cycling too much and so I swap the garage key for the back door key and I haven’t gone very far when I have to stop and walk past the mobile home that someone has not very helpfully parked on the pavement and I get to the proper countryside bit and there’s an old lady coming towards me with a dog and I’m about to move out of her way when she moves out of my way and she says morning and I say morning back and I get to the tree without stopping and go back the way I came and a petrol tanker or something is coming towards me and I have to stop but at least then I can get a bit of a breather and behind the petrol tanker or something is a car and I think I haven’t got all day to stand here and wait for cars to go past you know and after 1.5 miles I stop and I think NO, DON’T STOP, YOU LIGHTWEIGHT and so I keep on running and I get to the main road and I stop again and tell myself I can keep going, it’s not far now, only half a mile to go and there’s a car on the pavement and so I have to stop to walk round it and I get home and drag the two bins down the driveway back into the garden and wonder if I can get extra credit for moving bins and I’m sweating like I’ve just done a marathon or something but I suppose two miles for me at the mo is like a marathon, I’m so unfit.

And so that’s the end of Juneathon.  Well done to everyone who took part and a special thank you to Joggerblogger for coming up with the idea in the first place.  I’ll be naming the winners tomorrow, so if you have anyone you think is especially deserving of winning, let me know. 

Stats Juneathon day 30 (running)
Distance: 2.13 miles
Time: 23:43
Pace: 11:10 m/m
Calories: 186
Complicated new running watches: 1
Mobile homes on pavements: 1
Old ladies talking to me: 1
Petrol tankers or somethings: 1
Cars on pavements: 1
Bins taken in: 2
Juneathons completed: 26/30

Stats Juneathon day 30 (rowing)
Distance: 1.3 miles
Time: 30 minutes
Count: 1022
Calories: 66.6

Music
Radiohead
Ladyhawke

Juneathon 2009 Days 28 and 29 – 17 miles, cows, sheep & sunshine

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Saturday morning I spent being a WAG, and my feet hurt so much in my new boots even though I only had to walk from the car to the bench, it felt like I’d run 20 miles, so does that count for Juneathon? 

And on Sunday Shaun took me on a new route on the bikes and although we went past sheeps and cows, I didn’t take my camera with me so there’s no photographic evidence of my bovine based excursion.Road sign

But today, on the penultimate Juneathon, I thought I’d go back in search of cows, this time taking my camera, and hoping I don’t get lost.  I get to the bit where I think I’m supposed to turn off but there’s road signs and I don’t know what they mean and maybe they mean I can’t go down there (and I still don’t know what it means as the website I nicked the image off doesn’t say) and so I turn round and carry on going up the hill and I think no, I definitely needed to turn off where the road signs are but I decide to go a bit further to see what’s up the road but not much really so I turn round and go down the road I was supposed to go down in the first place and I get back to the village and decide not to go home yet but to cycle through the village and go a way I’ve only been in the car before and there’s a lot of traffic but I’m brave and don’t go on the pavement and then I’m on a quiet road again and there’s a road I remember Shaun saying something about that it’s a mile loop or something but I can’t remember what as I probably wasn’t listening as usual and I decide to carry on going straight ahead and little while later I get to the road I just passed and I think aah, I’ll go down there and go back that way then and I decide to stay out longer as I still haven’t seen any cows and sheep and I don’t know why as there were plenty of cows and sheep yesterday but my quest isn’t over yet and so I carry on going and I go past a field of blue flowers

Blue flowers

and I decide to go the way I went the other day that leads me out onto the main road and just as I get round the corner I SEE COWS!! 

Cows

Woo hoo.  And sheep.  Woo.

 Sheep

And one of the cows decides to demonstrate why they’re not very good at playing hide and seek

A not very well hidden cow

but then the cow comes out of its not very good hiding place and it’s the prettiest cow in the whole world

Unhidden cow

and it’s right up against the fence and I want to stroke its nose but I don’t know if cows bite or not and so I decide not to stroke the cow and I eventually tear myself away from the prettiest cow in the whole world and a bit further on I go past where we saw the ducks shagging in a most violent manner and there’s brown and white sheep

Brown and white sheep

but they’re a bit camera shy and run away

Brown and white sheep running away

except for one greedy fat bastard sheep who carries on eating

Sheep eating

and then I go down a steep hill I don’t remember going down before and I get to the main road and I decide to be brave and cycle down it to home and that’s today’s Juneathon done and as tomorrow is the last Juneathon for this year, I’m going to test out my new running watch and attempt a run and as Joggerblogger has entrusted me with the responsibility of choosing this year’s Juneathon Winner, you’d all better start getting your bribes in now.

Route

Splits

Stats day 29 (cycling)
Distance: 17.30 miles
Time: 1:43:02
Speed: 10.1mph
Calories: 475
Fields of blue flowers: 1
Cows: some
Sheep: also some
Hills I don’t remember: 1
Pavements cycled on: 0
Days to get bribes to me: 2
Juneathon’s completed: 25/30

Self destructing boots

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As you know, this time last year, I was looking for some walking boots so I could go and climb some mountains.  Three of them, to be precise.  To be even more precise, Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Mount Snowden.  Yes, the Three Peaks Challenge.  Although I did it in a girly lightweight style, climbing them over three days instead of 24 hours like the nutters do.

Obviously, if you’re going to be doing a lot of walking,  you’re going to need something decent on your feet.  I’d trawled the outdoor shops in my lunch hour (in the days when I had one of those job things) hoping to find something suitable that also looked good.  Bad mistake.  Good looking walking boots do. not. exist.  At all.  Ever.  The man in the shop said, “it’s not a fashion parade” as I tried on a pair of boots that even my 74 year mother would squirm at.  “But,” I protested, “they’re just soooooooooooo hideous!”  And they were.  Eventually, I found a shop with a pair that were just on the right side of not too hideous and I went home with my new walking boots.

Berghaus have made a pair that also aren’t too hideous.  In fact, I’d say they’re not too bad at all really.  I’m not sure what the two to three season thing means though.  Does that mean that after two or three seasons they’re going to fall apart?  So if you’re a complete lightweight and it takes you three seasons to do the Three Peaks and you’ve gone up Ben Nevis in the Spring, Scafell Pike in the Summer  and then you’re at the top of Snowden in the Autum and suddenly they disintegrate, leaving you to catch the train back down in your bare feet?  Just as well you left Snowden to last then, eh?

If you watch the Webtogs video, you can learn more about the boots, and hear some technical stuff that I don’t understand, like aggressive lugs.  And things I do understand like laces that expand when your feet get hot, I could do with that with my girly WAG boots.

 

Juneathon 2009 Day 26 – from bumpkin to WAG

6 comments

Thanks for all your messages of support yesterday, I might even attempt a run again next week, but not tomorrow, as tomorrow I’m scrapping the Staplehurst 10k which I probably wouldn’t finish until midnight and therefore waste valuable drinking time and instead I’m going to be a WAG and watch Shaun play football which he was coerced into doing by Gary.  I said to Shaun, do you even know how to play football? and he said um, er, well, I’ll just run around and try not to get beaten up and tackle some people and try to pass the ball to people wearing the right colour and that sounded about right to me and so tomorrow I’ll be swapping my wellies for a pair of heels, in particular these ones

Pink & black boots

if they turn up in the post today and I haven’t worn heels for ages and ages and only actually owned one pair that I threw away when I moved here because a) I can’t walk in heels and look like a man in drag tottering around; b) heels hurt my feet and I’m too much of a wuss to let vanity take precedence over comfort; and c) I’d be taller than Shaun if I wore anything higher than a pair of my variously coloured completely flat Converse but I was browsing amazon looking at books and accidentally wandered into the shoe department and I saw these boots and thought they look very cool and don’t look very high and they’re not made of dead animals and they don’t even cost £10 and therefore I MUST OWN THOSE BOOTS and now I’m going to, hurrah.

And I seem to have turned into a girl and blogged about boots, for which I’m very sorry and I did Juneathon this morning, honest.  I was going to go out on the Pashley but it was raining and as the rowing machine was still out and I didn’t have to spend 15 minutes unfolding it, I went on that for half an hour.

Stats Juneathon day 26 (rowing)
Distance: 1.4 miles
Time: 30 minutes
Count: 1085
Calories: 68.5
Music: Ladyhawke
Pairs of cool pink & black boots: 1
WAGs: 1
Juneathons completed: 23/30

 

Juneathon 2009 Day 25 – Might as well give up

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I seem to have lost what little running ability I once possessed and can’t even manage two miles now and so I might as well either a) go back three years and do a run/walk program; or b) move back to London where there’s proper places to run; or c) give up completely.

I don’t like running in the countryside; I can’t have my iPod up loud, the roads are full of holes so I have to look at the ground all the time to avoid them and then there’s the traffic of which there isn’t much, admittedly, but I can’t just switch off, otherwise I’ll get run over.

So, on what may well be my last ever run, I managed .96 of a mile before stopping to walk, then running a bit further to the tree, went around the tree and came back the way I came, stopped to let a tractor pass, ran down the road towards the house where an old lady said something to me; I wasn’t sure what she said as I’d turned my iPod up loud once I’d reached the safety of the pavement so I assumed she said morning and so I said morning back and then she said something else that was drowned out by Devo so I just smiled and carried on walking (I’d stopped running about half a mile back) until I got back to the house where I spent longer getting the rowing machine unfolded and ready to use than I spent on the stupid thing. 

Stats Juneathon day 25 (running)
Distance: 2.19 miles
Time: 28:44
Pace: 13:06 m/m
Calories: 186
Tractors: 1
Old ladies talking to me: 1
Juneathons completed: 22/30

Stats Juneathon day 25 (rowing)
Distance: 736 ft
Time: 10 minutes
Count: 355
Calories: 20

Juneathon 2009 Day 24 – Cycling, cows & secret lovechild

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I slacked yesterday, I’m not doing very well with this Juneathon thing but I was just soooooooooooooooooooooo tired, I could hardly keep my eyes open and I didn’t go to the running club either, oops.  But as today was nice and sunny, I thought I’d take the Pashley out for a few miles, stopping off at the deli on the way round.  I spend what seems like about three weeks gathering together my camera, phone and money and my camera switches itself on and there’s a photo of a baby on there and I think WHAT THE FUCK? why is there a picture of a baby on my camera? and I don’t recognise the baby and I think, well, I wouldn’t do, I don’t know any babies and then I think maybe Shaun borrowed my camera to take a photo of his secret lovechild and forgot to delete it and I think oh no, I’ll have to pack my bags and move back to London citing reasons of unfaithfulness and it’s our first anniversary today and everything and finding out he’s got a secret lovechild will put a bit of a downer on things, and then I decide Shaun hasn’t got a secret lovechild as he is as keen on babies as much as I am, which isn’t very much at all really and then I remember that it’s the camera I bought secondhand off eBay to replace the broken one and it must be the original owner’s baby and therefore nothing to do with secret lovechildren and I don’t have to pack my bags and go back to London citing reasons of unfaithfulness and I put the camera, phone and money in my waistbag then get my Garmin and lock and eventually get the bike out of the garage and then go back in for the key to the lock as that would help if I want to lock my bike which I do when I go into the shop as if anyone stole my bike I would cry and I put on my Garmin and my dorky hat that will hopefully stop my head from getting splattered all over the road if I fall off and I go round to where the cows are and I stop to take a photo and my camera says memory full and I think how can it be full, I haven’t taken any photos and so I delete the photo of the baby that probably isn’t Shaun’s secret lovechild and take a photo of the cows and I get back to the village and wonder where to lock my bike and there’s a bike against a lamp post but not locked and I think there’s no way I’m not locking my bike up but there’s nowhere for me to lock it to, so I just lean it against the wall and lock it and hope no one steals it and carries it away and I go into the deli and pick up what I want and I’m worried about my bike and the girl behind the counter is taking ages to serve the people in front of me and I don’t want my bike to get stolen and I get impatient and put back the stuff I wanted to buy and go back outside and my bike hasn’t been stolen and I unlock it and go back the long way round to go home and I get to the tree and decide to carry on and go further and I see a field full of little blue flowers and I get my camera out and it says memory full and I think how can it be full, I’ve only taken one picture of some cows and I wonder if it’s on the internal memory and not the memory card and I go through all the settings but can’t find a memory setting and so I go to take the memory card out so I can put it back in again and see if that fixes it and I open it and there’s no flipping memory card in there and I think ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I must have left it in my computer and then I think oh shit, I don’t remember putting it in Shaun’s computer so it must be in my computer that’s gone to the computer hospital and so that’s probably the last I’ve seen of that then and then I text Facebook to tell it what a fuckwit I am and then I think aha, I can take pictures on my phone and so I do but I haven’t got the software installed on this pc so I can’t upload them and then I get to where I usually turn right and Shaun said something about where turning left goes but I can’t remember what but I turn left anyway for a change and after a while I get to a busy main road and I wonder if it’s our road but I don’t really know and I think I don’t want to go down there in case it goes on for miles and miles and and there’s no pavement or anything and so I turn round and go back the way I came and I get to a turning and I wonder if I should turn off there or just keep going and I can’t remember which way I came and I go past a few houses I don’t remember seeing and I think I’ve gone the wrong way and just as I’m about to turn round and go back I realise I’m at the point where I turned off in the first place and I think shall I go home or shall I carry on and do my seven mile route? and I decide to carry on and do the seven mile route which is probably about five miles from here and I’ve already done 9 miles and as I’m going up a steep bit a cyclist overtakes me and I think show off and I spend the next four miles trying to catch him up and as I go over any bumps my bell keeps dinging and I hope he doesn’t think I’m dinging him and as we get back to the road, he turns left and I turn right and go home and I’ve done 15.5 miles which I think probably counts for Juneathon ok today.

Splits

Stats day 24 (cycling)
Distance: 15.51 miles
Time: 1:37:24
Speed: 9.6mph
Calories: 425
Secret lovechildren: 1
Memory cards I’ll probably never see again: 1
Cyclists overtaking me: 1
Cyclists reovertaken by me: 0
Juneathon’s completed: 21/30

Juneathon 2009 – Days 19, 21 & 22 – bikes, boats and llamas

8 comments

Friday I did a quick 3.5 mile bike ride before going to meet a friend for lunch in London, then spent the afternoon doing touristy things like go on a boat trip down the Thames and take photos of the London Eye

London Eye 

and then I met up with another friend for drinks and dinner and then on Saturday I was too tired to Juneathon but on Sunday, after collecting my lovely pink Pashley Poppy

Pashley Poppy 

we did a 6.8 mile bike ride, taking in a visit to the llamas

Llama 

and today I went out for 8.5 miles on the Pashley after my brand new pc from Dell was collected to be taken to the Dell hospital for repair as it’s got a fault on the hard drive and now I’m pc-less for two weeks which isn’t too bad as Shaun has kindly lent me his and if you’re wondering when I’m ever going to run again, I’m going to a running club tomorrow evening, hooray.

Stats day 19 (cycling)
Distance: 3.58 miles
Time: 24:37
Pace: 6:53 m/m

Stats day 21 (cycling)
Distance: 6.82 miles
Time: 47:42
Pace: 7:00 m/m

Stats day 22 (cycling)
Distance: 8.57 miles
Time: 47:12
Pace: 5:31 m/m

Juneathon’s completed: 20/30

Juneathon 2009 Days 17 & 18 (and an extra credit)

9 comments

I didn’t slack yesterday, honest.  I cycled 8.5 miles and here’s the splits to prove it:

And here’s a photo of a horse posing by my bike that I took yesterday to prove I was there.  Ok, so I should have had the horse holding a copy of yesterday’s newspaper in his teeth, but I didn’t pass an Evening Standard seller, funnily enough.

A horse posing with a Raleigh Shopper

And you’d better say bye to the Raleigh Shopper as, on Sunday, we’re going to pick up this

which is my new bike and I’m very very excited as it’s the prettiest bike in the whole wide world.

In the evening Shaun decided to drag me out on his Juneathon run on my bike to carry out carrying shopping duties after he’d taken a Juneathon detour through Sainsburys, and because I had already Juneathoned and as 8pm is a time for watching telly or reading or playing on Facebook or eating crisps or drinking wine or all of the above but definitely anything that doesn’t actually involve exercise I have made an executive decision and decided that being a shopping basket counts as an extra credit and cancels out one of my slacker days.

And today, after my successful 3 miles on Tuesday, I decide that this morning I will go out for 4 miles.  This actually turns into 1 mile sort of running and then turning round and walking most of the way back home.  But I did slightly redeem myself by going on the rowing machine for ten minutes when I got back and I’ll be going for a bike ride at lunchtime before doing some work that I should have done yesterday and that I’ll have to do before Dell send a courier to collect the shit pc they sold me.

Stats Juneathon day 17 part 1 (cycling)
Distance: 8.56 miles
Time: 56:38
Speed: 9.1mph
Calories: 232
Horses posing with bikes: 1
Pink Pashley Poppys being picked up on Sunday: 1
Weight: 9st 4
Juneathon’s completed: 15/30

Stats Juneathon day 17 part 2 (cycling)
Distance: 2.44 miles
Time: 18:41
Speed: 7.8mph
Calories: 76
Shopping basket duties: 1
Executive decisions made that this cancels out a slacker day: 1
Juneathon’s completed: 16/30

Stats Juneathon day 18 (running)
Distance: 2.08 miles
Time: 26:25
Pace: 12:43 m/m
Calories: 186
Shit pcs that Dell sold me: 1
Juneathon’s completed: 17/30

Stats Juneathon day 18 (rowing)
Distance: 893 ft
Time: 10 minutes
Count: 364
Calories: 24.3

Stats Juneathon day 18 (cycling)
Distance: 5.21 miles
Time: 33:00
Speed: 9.5mph
Calories: 150

 

 

Juneathon 2009 Day 16 – One of the locals

6 comments

I didn’t sleep well and decided to have a lie in because, um, I can and I get up about 8:45 and think today I am definitely going for a run and I’m going to attempt three miles but not go down the bad road but just go past the tree for half a mile then come back again and by the time I’ve wasted time it’s 10:30 and I had told myself that while I don’t have much work on, I’ll study in the morning and work in the afternoon but now the morning’s going to disappear by the time I’ve run and showered and washed my hair and everything and I also need to go to the library to return The Kite Runner DVD (brilliant book, crap film) and I think how come when I’ve got all day to do whatever I want to do I still don’t have any time? and I need to read my time management book that I haven’t found time to read yet and I go out for my run and a few cars come along and I ignore the cars and just look at the road so I can avoid the holes and the cars go around me and I get to the tree and I carry on for half a mile and The Veronicas start singing Untouched and I love the start of this as it sounds like something out of Flashdance or Fame or something and I want to put on leg warmers and start doing backflips and stuff but I’m not sure that would be appropriate in the middle of a country lane and although I could do backflips when I was about 9 and wanted to be Olga Korbut, I’m not sure I could still do them now, in fact I’m 100% sure I would probably break something if I even attempted one and I turn around and go back the way I came and ignore more cars and then I’m back out on the street and it’s a bit of a slope really big hill and I’m not sure I can run up it and I remember reading what RunningAmok said Fit Artist said Runner’s World said about looking at the floor and pretending it’s flat so I try this but it just makes me feel sick and I stop to walk and I think get running, it’s not far now, only a few hundred feet and a man’s indicating to turn into his driveway and he pulls over and I wave to say thank you but he’s not indicating to turn into his driveway, he’s stopped to ask directions and I think oh no, I’m not going to know where he wants to go, I can barely remember where I live most of the time and he asks me where Weald Golf Club is and I think huh? I don’t know about a golf club, there’s a bowls club and then I think aha, I do know, it’s where the gym is that I enquired about and I say is it the one in Sutton Valence? and he says yes and I point up the road and say it’s about two miles that way and he says thank you dear, sorry to have bothered you, and I say that’s ok and then I think woo hoo, go me giving directions, that almost makes me a local, I think.

Route

Splits

Stats Juneathon day 16 (running)
Distance: 3.05 miles
Time: 32:24
Pace: 10:38m/m
Calories: 278
Mornings disappeared: 1
Time management books ignored: 1
Cars ignored: a few
Cars ignoring me: a few
Flashdances done: 0
Men asking directions: 1
Mes able to give directions: 1
Weight: 9st 4
Juneathon’s completed: 14/30

Stats Juneathon day 16 (rowing)
Distance: 1.4 miles
Time: 30 minutes
Count: 1028
Calories: 67.5

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