Crisis Square Mile Run 2008 race report

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Well it’s that time of year again when I get a free red t-shirt and run through the City of London with 1,999 other similarly attired runners. Yes, it’s the Crisis Square Mile Run which was my first ever race two years ago and therefore is my most favouritest race ever ever ever.

I decide to do another experiment and run without my iPod and “soak in the atmosphere”. My experiment lasts for approximately 100 yards when two girls next to me start screeching and I switch my iPod on to drown them out with my new favourite band, Black Kids.

We get under London Bridge and the race has come to a standstill as 2,000 people attempt to go up the stairs single file and we’re held up for ages and I look at my Garmin and it says we’ve gone .85 miles in 17 minutes which isn’t very fast really and I think we’re going to be a bit longer than the 35 minutes I said I’d be and Bernard the official bag looker afterer and beer getter inner will be getting bored and cold and there’s a man in zebra print and then there’s a dickhead dressed up as a doctor carrying a huge plastic hypodermic needle which he is perilously close to spiking people with, the twat, and we go past a lot of pubs and I have a brainwave and think next year, we could walk round and get a quick half in each pub along the route and then even lightweights like Bernard can join in instead of looking after the bags and getting the beer in although looking after the bags and getting the beer in is obviously a very important job and we get to the Millennium Bridge and have to do another lap and I do another lap and get back to the bridge and go up it and people are still just finishing their first lap and I think ha, I’ve lapped people, there’s a first time for everything and I get to the finish line and get my banana and water and go and wait for Kate to finish and I see her coming over the bridge and I start cheering and clapping and then Bernard says, er, that’s not Kate and I think oh shit I should have worn my glasses and I’ve just cheered and clapped a complete stranger and then a man on a spacehopper comes over the bridge and ha ha, Kate’s going to be beaten by a man on a spacehopper but Kate overtakes him and I make sure it is Kate this time and it is so I cheer and clap and then we go and rehydrate with beer and then go back to Paternoster Square to claim our goody bags

and I go and find Womble to say hello to and Kate and Bernard have picked up a goody bag for me then we go to the pub and near the pub is this nice building

then we go to Harry’s Bar to get pizza as Harry’s Bar does the nicest pizza in the City and when we’ve finished our pizza they bring us chocolates with the bill and they owe us 2p as they haven’t got any change so we say ok, we’ll let you off the 2p but you have to give us more chocolate and they do and then we go to another pub which is really crap and then I go to get the train home and at the station is a sign with a number you can text to grass up fare dodgers and for some reason I find this really funny.

Route

Splits

Stats
 Distance: 3.32 miles
Time: 44:37
Pace: 13:26 m/m
Calories: 282
Time spent under London Bridge: 15+ minutes
Men dressed as zebras: 1
Dickheads waving spiky plastic things around: 1
Pub crawl ideas: 1
Kate lookalikes: 1
Men on spacehoppers: 1
Music
Black Kids
THE 100 MILE CHALLENGE
 Miles completed so far
47.85 out of 100 / 12 days left

Juneathon Day 9

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I rejoin the rat race and go to work for 10 as they want me in the office this week instead of working at home but nothing happens ’til 11 and it goes on for ever and ever and I don’t finish until 7 and I say to boss man I can’t work this late every day and especially not in the office as this is a drop in salary and I’ll be spending loads on travel and it wouldn’t be so bad working late if I’m at home and he says it shouldn’t be this late usually, it should only be until about 5:30 and he says what do I want to do and I say can I work at home at least part of the time and he says can I work in the office this week and he had thought that there’d be other things I could do and he knows I do web design and he thought I could do their site and be paid privately for it and I don’t tell him I don’t do web design anymore and he says can I at least do tomorrow and Wednesday and talk to him about it then and I say ok and I was going to go to the gym after work and do a mile on the treadmill for the Salomon Challenge but it’s 7:18 and I’d get home really really late if I did that and so I walk to Liverpool Street for Juneathon and then there’s no trains so I get the Central  Line and walk two miles home for even extra Juneathon and I hope I get out earlier tomorrow because I’m supposed to be going out and I hope I get out earlier on Wednesday as I have my evening class and I hope I get out earlier on Thursday because I’ve got a race and this working malarkey is interfering with my life and maybe I should just go and ask for my old job back although not being around solicitors was very nice today.

Stats:
Miles walked: 5
Jobs finishing late: 1
Solicitors: 0
Juneathons completed: 9/9

Mad dogs and Englishmen

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I’m not a man and I’m only quarter English, so I must be a mad dog and I go out in the midday sun and get the train to the forest to practice looking at trees to acclimatise myself for my upcoming trip to Cornwall, as the frequent postings of photographs of verdant ruralness on Emily’s blog are making me a tad nervous, even if she did post a photo of a pavement for me to try and reassure me that there is a bit of concrete around.

I decide to be a sad cow and let my Garmin track me on the train and 4.31 miles and 14:02 minutes later I’m in the forest looking at trees.

And then there’s an uphill bit and I walk up it because I am a weed.

But what goes up must come down.

And it really is a beautiful sunny day and I had planned to run in the forest next week but instead I accidentally went and de-unemployed pikied myself and have to go and sit in an office all week instead instead of running around in the sunshine and practising being a country bumpkin.

And then I see a road and I think eek, I didn’t want to see a road yet, I’m still practising looking at trees but it’s a road without a pavement so it’s like those stupid roads in the countryside with no pavements.

Because I am not brave enough to go on roads without pavements, I stay in the forest but the path has disappeared and now there’s only mud.

And I get nice and muddy and I pass a man with a husky dog and come to a gate which appears to be locked and I’m wondering how to go over the gate and then I SEE A BUNNY!!

There is a bunny in that photo, honest. And then husky dog man just pulls the gate open as it is only pretending to be locked and I’m glad the bunny distracted me long enough so I didn’t try and climb over the gate that was pretending to be locked and look like a muppet.

Then as I’m going past some lake thing

“Last Chance on the Stairway” by Duran Duran comes on and starts off with what sounds like a cigarette being lit and someone inhaling and I’m thinking OH MY GOD, MILLIONS OF 11 YEAR OLD GIRLS LISTENED TO THEIR RECORDS AND THEY’RE ENCOURAGING SMOKING and then I’m thinking I started smoking when I was 11 and it would appear that it’s all Simon Le Bon’s fault and how much can I sue him for and I decide probably quite a lot as he’s probably worth a few quid.

And then when I’ve got over the shock of Simon Le Bon being to blame for millions of 11 year old smokers in the early 1980s I realise I’m a bit lost and haven’t a clue where I am and I come to another road and this one has a bit of a pavement on it and I run down it.

And I come to a residential area but I still don’t know where I am and it would appear I’m not even in London anymore as the road signs don’t have postcodes on them and then I see a sign that says I’m in Loughton and I think I could get the Central Line home but I don’t want to get the tube, I want to get back to Chingford and then I think aah, my Nokia N95 has GPS and maps on it, my N95 will get me home safely but it doesn’t want to get a satellite and the maps aren’t much help so I decide to go back the way I came and I see a duck or a goose or something

and there’s a baby one with it and I want to go closer and take its photo but the big duck or goose or whatever it is starts hissing at me and the baby duck or goose or whatever it is gets in the water and they all swim away and I’m still lost in the forest like Robert Smith and I’m wondering if I’m ever going to get home and then I remember my Garmin has a navigation thing on it but I don’t know how to use it and it doesn’t seem to make any sense and the start keeps moving and the arrow just moves around so I give up on that and trust my instincts that I’m going the right way and then eventually I come to a bit which a sign says is Chingford Plain

and I think this must be where I came in but it doesn’t look familiar but I am in the right place and I get the train and it’s still nice and sunny so I decide to get off two stops early and walk home but I don’t know the way so I consult my N95 and head off in what I hope is the right direction then I get to the medieval house

and I think hurrah, I know where I am now and I’m no longer lost and nearly home.

Today’s route

Stats:
Distance: 6.56 miles
Time: 1:36:10 minutes
Pace: 14:40
Calories: 511
Trees: lots
Mud: lots
Roads without pavements: 1
Gates pretending to be locked: 1
Bunnies: 1
Ducks or geese: 3
Medieval houses: 1
Juneathons completed: 8/8
Music
Duran Duran
Ting Tings
Blur
Foo Fighters
The Jam
Rolling Stones
Beatles
Jeff Buckley
THE 100 MILE CHALLENGE
 Miles completed so far
44.53 out of 100 / 16 days left

The sound of silence

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After reading the sound v silence debate on Runner’s World, I am inspired to conduct my own experiment and go for a run without my iPod, although why there even needs to be a debate about it is beyond me as Walkmans were invented for running with, so really it should be compulsory.

Off I go without my iPod and have forgotten I haven’t got it with me before I’ve even got to the gate where I go to switch it on. I haven’t even got to the end of the road before I’ve tried to push in my headphones further into my ears. I start to run and I don’t think I like this running without music thing and I keep thinking someone’s running behind me but it’s just my trouser legs brushing against each other and I get to the traffic lights and there’s a dead mouse or bird or something but I don’t stop to take its photo and I go over the footbridge and it’s all echoey and scary and I need my iPod to protect me and I think why does it feel safer when I can’t hear anything around me, is it like when you’re a kid and you think an axe murderer has broken in to bludgeon you to death, you hide under the covers because that will obviously save you and further down the path is a green chili and I think how did that get there? but I don’t stop to take a photo and then I get to the bridge and I think oh no, I don’t want to go under the bridge without my iPod and as I’m going through the bridge THERE’S A MAN COMING TOWARDS ME AND HE HASN’T GOT A DOG and I think I’m going to have a heart attack but he walks past me without murdering me and then there’s a man with a dog and I’m wondering if maybe I’ve got it wrong about men without dogs and maybe it’s men with dogs you should watch out for but the man with dog is friendly and he says morning and I say morning back and then I see some cherries on the ground and I think there must be a cherry tree here and I look up and sitting in the cherry tree is a bird.

And then there’s a woman yapping away on her mobile and I’m thinking if I had my iPod on I could drown her out and then I’m home and my experiment has come to an end and I have come to the conclusion that I prefer running with music and maybe I should go and start a 16 page thread about it.

Stats:
Distance: 2.96 miles
Time: 34:48 minutes
Pace: 11:45
Calories: 297
iPods: 0
Dead mice or birds or something: 1
Green chilis: 1
Men without dogs: 1
Men with dogs: 1
Cherries: lots
Birds sitting in cherry trees: 1
Women on mobile phones: 1
Juneathons completed: 7/7
Music
None
THE 100 MILE CHALLENGE
 Miles completed so far
37.97 out of 100 / 17 days left

Return to the rat race

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Yesterday I had a brainwave and thought to myself, aah, I used to work at home editing transcripts of live court hearings, I can do that again and so I email the company who gave me the work and said oi, gizza job, and my old boss phones and says yes, we should be able to give you enough work, come and see me tomorrow to have a chat and so I go to see him and I know where it is because they are in the building that I have just spent three years working in before I went to work for the crooks but I won’t bump into any ex-workmates as they celebrated my departure by moving into a swanky new office two days after I left but I get down the corridor and the building receptionist says Cathy, have you come to see me? and I say of course, how are you? and he asks me how the new office is and I say I don’t work for them any more but I don’t bother telling him about the crooks and I say do you want me to sign in? and he says no, just go up, you know where it is? and I say yes and I go up and speak to the man about the job and he says he should be able to pretty much keep me in full-time work if I want it and definitely until the end of July and I think that’s pretty cool, I’ll do that until then and then I’ll have August off and sunbathe or something and he says can I come in and work in the office for three days next week and I say yes, that’s fine and I go home and have emailed to me the software I need to set me up and while I’m on the phone getting set up I’m asked if I can work now.  What, like right now?!!!  Yes.  Bollocks.  I say yes, that’s fine and so I spend the afternoon working and then I get an email asking if I can work all next week and I think oh noooooooooooooooooooo, I liked the three days idea but I don’t want to look unwilling so I email back and say  yes, that’s fine, see you on Monday.

Bollocks.

And in case you’re wondering what this has to do with Juneathon, I walked from Liverpool Street instead of getting the tube.  It counts.

Stats:
Miles walked: 3
New jobs: 1
Days left of being an unemployed pikey: 0
Juneathons completed: 6/6

New shoes on Thursday

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Yesterday in the post came a letter from the crooks offering me a decent amount of compensation, so like any self-respecting money grabbing whore, I decide to take the money and run and I book a flight to Cornwall so I can go and visit Emily in a couple of weeks, yay.

And after I’ve finished getting letters from crooks and booking flights to Cornwall, I sit up late drinking, watching Lost and ringing people to laugh at them for being over 40 tomorrow and therefore officially old, I get up too late for the yogalates class I’d planned on going to at the gym.  Still, because I am not a wuss and because it’s still the month of June and therefore Juneathon must be done and also because it’s not the 24th yet and I still need to clock up 100 miles, I decide to run to the gym.

Because I’ve decided to ditch the Nike+ Sportband due to it being a worthless piece of crap, I put on my new shoes

although my new shoes are trail shoes and I can’t remember there being any trails between my house and the gym and they’re not very comfy but they get me to the gym in a weedy run/walk kind of way and I get to the gym and do 20 minutes on the rowing machine and go to do 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer but wimp out after 1k and then manage a feeble 2k on the bike and then I walk home and it’s 2:15 and I think where did the day go?

Stats:
Distance: 2.07 miles
Time: 29:28 minutes
Pace: 14:15
Calories: 165
Letters from crooks: 1
Flights booked to Cornwall: 1
Runs to gym: 1
Walks back from gym: 1
Feeble efforts in the gym: 1
Juneathons completed: 5/5
Music
The Beatles
Young Knives
Plain White Ts
Manic Street Preachers
Mark Ronson
The Cure
Sisters of Mercy
Hard-Fi
THE 100 MILE CHALLENGE
 Miles completed so far
35.01 out of 100 / 20 days left

Walkathon day 4

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Unlike yesterday, when it pissed down constantly, today is a beautiful sunny day and I take my unemployed pikey self round the marshes and think to myself, this is far better than sitting in a windowless office in the City being frozen to death by the air conditioning.

And as today’s run is going to be a leisurely affair, I stop to see what the sign about cyclists on the boardwalk says

and it says the boardwalk is for pedestrians and cyclists can piss off. Yay.

Then across the river I see something being built and I wonder if it’s affordable housing and can I get one seeing as I’m unemployed now and then I can rent it out and live on the rental income and not bother getting a proper job.

And then a cute bloke with a dog comes over the bridge and I wonder if he’ll marry me and let me spend my days not working but taking pictures of building sites instead and I decide probably not and maybe I’ll have to go and get one of those job things and then an ironman runs past me and I know he’s an ironman because he has the ironman tattoo on the back of his calf and I think it would look better on his ankle but apparently you’re not supposed to call them tattoos although I wasn’t told what you’re supposed to call them instead as it looked like a tattoo to me and then I get to the filterbeds and there’s a lock on the gate

so I have to take the path along the river instead

and then I see some lilypads

and I wonder if there’s any frogs as I like frogs but I can’t see any frogs so I continue on my way and try to get over the disappointment of not seeing any frogs and then I get to the bit of the marshes where there’s going to be a half marathon

and it’s going to comprise of six laps or something and I think SIX LAPS ROUND THE FIELD? Fuck that, I would lose the will to live after a lap and a half and it looks like it’s all going to be on grass and I don’t like running on grass unless they’re going to take in the foresty bit too and then I see a tower block

and I think fuck off tower block, you’re spoiling my view, but what do I expect? I’m in Hackney and Hackney is the home of the council estate and then I get to a bridge I’ve never been over before

so I go over the bridge I’ve never been over before but it doesn’t seem to go anywhere so I go back over the bridge I’ve never been over before which is now the bridge I’ve been over twice and there’s a sign saying no fishing

and there’s a fine of £2,500. £2,500? Blimey, would be cheaper to go to the chippy I would imagine, not that I would know how much fish costs in the chippy and people shouldn’t be fishing anyway. Poor little fishes.

And then I’m back at the stables

and a horse comes over to see me

and then my phone tells me it’s run out of memory and so I can’t take any more photos so I think I might as well go home then.

Stats:
Distance: 6.51 miles
Time: 1:44:29 minutes
Pace: 16:04
Calories: 477
Sunny days: 1
Cyclists not allowed on the boardwalk: all of them
Building sites: 1
Cute men with dogs: 1
Ironmen: 1
Locks: 1
Lilypads: lots
Frogs: 0
Towerblocks: 1
New bridges: 1
No fishing signs: 1
Phones running out of memory: 1
Juneathons completed: 4/4
Music
The Secret Machines
The Levellers
The Beatles
Morphine
Fuzzbox
Stereo Total
Nirvana
Young Knives
Plain White Ts
Dexys Midnight Runners
THE 100 MILE CHALLENGE
 Miles completed so far
32.94 out of 100 / 21 days left

Juneathon Day 3

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I get up early (and remember, to anyone unemployed, any time before lunchtime Neighbours is early) with the intention of doing a mile before heading off to agency no. 1 to see if they can de-unemployed pikey me and it has to be just a mile as I have to give off an air of sleek professionalism and not that of a drowned rat and my hair will ming far less after a mile than after three miles but then I look out of the window and FUCK, IT’S RAINING and that puts paid to that then and I think bollocks, I’ve got another agency to go to this afternoon and then I’m coming home, just to near enough go straight out again to meet up with an old boss from years ago who, although I’m very much looking forward to seeing again, can’t ask him for a job because a) he’s just taken on a new assistant; and b) he pays fuck all what with there not being a huge amount of money in the literary agency world.

But I am not destined to fall into the Juneathon failure bucket just yet as I have a cunning plan in that walking from the Liverpool Street agency to the Chancery Lane one counts. And it doubley counts if I walk back as well. And it’s not even hiding an unemployed pikey money saving excuse as I have a travelcard. So there.

Oh, and look, I’ve inspired someone. Yay, go me.

Stats:
3 miles walking
Juneathon days completed: 3/3
People inspired by me: 1

Juneathon Day 2

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Not only is it the second day of Juneathon but it’s also the first day of my new life as a lady of leisure, which I have decided sounds better than unemployed pikey.  I email the agency and say those crooks at [enter name of crooks here] have given my job back to their old secretary who came back from travelling the world early, i.e. after two weeks, the lightweight, and the agent does sound genuinely upset for me and not just because of the commission he’s just lost although he will be even more upset when he hears that the other new secretary rang the crooks this morning and told them she wasn’t going back in an act of solidarity and therefore that’s quite a lot of commission he’s just lost.  Oops.

After emailing the crooks and telling them I know about the other girl coming back, I fix up an appointment to see another agency tomorrow morning and then decide to get some Juneathoning done before continuing on my new unemployed pikey lady of leisure lifestyle and I decide to wear my new shoes but I’m wearing a red t-shirt again but I decide that not wearing red and green together hasn’t done much for my luck so far in my 38 years and so I decide to be reckless but then remember that my new shoes have weird Salomon quicklaces on them

and so I can’t tie my Nike+ pouch to them and although it’s completely pointless me taking the Nike+ Sportband out because it’s inaccurate and the calibrating didn’t work, I still want to take it out because it updates the Nike+ challenge widget thing over there on the right and makes me look like I’ve run a lot of miles and even more importantly, run further than Warriorwoman although I don’t think that’s cheating as much as trying to make out going on a Wii is valid Juneathoning.

Stats:
Distance: 3.03 miles
Time: 31:42 minutes
Pace: 10:27
Calories: 305
Agencies losing lots of commision: 1
Agencies to see tomorrow: 1
Crooks emailed: 1
Days of being a lady of leisure: 1
Juneathons completed: 2/2
Music
The Secret Machines
The Levellers
Toyah
Muse
THE 100 MILE CHALLENGE
 Miles completed so far
26.43 out of 100 / 23 days left

City of London Race for Life 2008

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After getting the sack from my new job on Friday for the spurious reason that my twat of a boss found me a bit abrupt, I later find out that his old secretary came back from her travels early and asked for her job back. Wanker. I spend Saturday drinking and sulking and decide that I’m not getting out of bed today, let alone go and run a Race for Life with 10,000 women wearing pink and walking really slowly but by the time I drag myself off to bed at 3am I decide to set my alarm anyway and see how I feel in the morning. In the morning I feel shit but I decide to do my race and, after all, Juneathon starts today and the laws of Juneathon must be upheld.

I get in the right lane this year, the lane for runners, unlike last year when I joined the walkers by mistake and I think we’ve set off but everyone’s still walking and I don’t see a start line and then we get round the corner and I see the start line so we haven’t started yet and then there’s a countdown and it takes three minutes to get across the start line so I decide my Garmin time will be my official time and by the time we’ve gone .2 of a mile, people have already started walking and I decide to push anyone walking out of my way and then I see some shops that look familiar and I realise we’re running down Cheapside and I’ve just gone past my ex-work and I think I should have brought a petrol bomb with me or something and after about 2 miles I overtake a girl who had been walking in front of me and who’d I’d already overtaken and I think how did she get there? and then I realise SHE CHEATED!! She must have crossed over the island and CHEATED and I’m pretty sure if you cheat in a charity run then you definitely go to hell and then some woman barges into me so I elbow her in the ribs and she says sorry and at last the race is over and my Garmin says it was only 2.75 miles but because I spent most of it stuck behind people walking slowly I don’t qualify for free pizza which I have been promised if I can do a sub-30 5k and I go and get my medal and my goody bag which consists of a granola bar, cranberry juice, moisturiser, face wash, deodorant and a horrible brown lipstick but at least I got a goody bag unlike Shaun, who, in his last race only got a paper cup and speaking of Shaun he’s just started a blog so he can join in Juneathon, so go and take the piss out of say hello to him here.

Goody bag

Today’s route

Stats:
Distance: 2.75 mile
Time: 32:32 minutes
Pace: 11:50
Calories: 276
New jobs: 0
Hangovers: 1
Women wearing pink and walking really slowly: 10,000
Juneathons: 1
Music:
The Mission
Sisters of Mercy
Madonna
Faith No More
The Secret Machines
The Levellers
Baby Teeth
Hole
Chumbawamba
THE 100 MILE CHALLENGE
 Miles completed so far
23.46 out of 100 / 24 days left

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