Janathon Day 5 – strangers, pub, cats and dogs

I am too knackered to blog properly, so here’s my blog post in a list.

1. Saw tweet a couple of weeks ago about local bike ride, organised by Spokes.

2. Thought, I want to go on the bike ride and favourited the tweet to remind me.

3. Woke up and the weather wasn’t minging, so went off to meet a bunch of strangers.

4. Met the bunch of strangers who turned out to be a very nice bunch of people indeed.

5. Discovered I wasn’t the only one there who should have been at home writing a dissertation proposal instead of gallivanting around the countryside.

6. Cycled for about an hour until reached a pub in Smarden.

7. Spent a long time patting the dogs and stroking the cats in the pub.

8. Ordered cheese omelette and jacket wedges, then moaned my jacket wedges were chips, not wedges, and the chips were raw.

9. One of the group was perturbed her lunch didn’t come with the advertised bread.

10. One of the group said his jacket potato tasted old.

11. When we were asked how our food was, we all said ‘lovely, thanks’ in that good old British way even though we’d all just moaned about it.

12. Cycled for about another hour and went home and had two cups of hot chocolate to try and thaw out.

13. Went on Twitter and accidentally agreed to run Ashford parkrun with @TrevB1 in our onesies if he gets his workplace’s VLM place on Monday.

14. Spent four hours on Facebook trying to muster up the energy to blog. Remained unmustered.

15. Ate pie and mash and cabbage and gravy and wondered if I could be bothered to blog.

16. Realised I couldn’t be bothered to blog so wrote a list instead.

bike-capture

Juneathon 2009 Day 9 – Hold back the rain (but not the mince pies)

I thought I’d put the jog back into my blog today, and switched on my iPod to hear Simon Le Bon singing “Hold Back The Rain” which was quite appropriate really, as it was pissing down.

I get to the corner and there’s a man parked there and I wonder why he’s parked there and he’s got a suit hanging up in his car and I wonder if he’s a salesman or something and a car comes up behind me and I remember what Adele said about being confident and letting them go around me or something and it does go around me and I see a man coming out of the bushes and I wonder what he’s doing in the bushes but then a dog comes out too and I get round the corner and there’s a runner coming towards me and this pleases me greatly as I’ve only seen one other runner out since I’ve been here and I smile at him and he looks at me in a strange way and I think sod you then, next time I see you, I’m going to trip you up and I don’t know why he didn’t recognise me as a fellow hardcore runner as I’m out in the rain and got a Garmin and everything and I get to the tree and go back the way I came and there’s a woman with a Doberman up ahead and the dog is looking very interested in me and keeps turning round and I don’t know whether I should stop to walk but I don’t want to stop as I’ve done enough run/walk lately and I’ve got a 10k coming up in a couple of weeks which is going to be difficult enough but she’s keeping the dog close to her and she moves to the side and I move to the other side and run past and I don’t get mauled by the devil dog and I get home and have a mince pie and some hot chocolate to warm me up in this freezing summer weather.

Stats (running)
Distance: 2.16 miles
Time: 23:03
Pace: 10:40 m/m
Calories: 188
Simon Le Bons singing Hold Back The Rain: 1
Men coming out of the bushes with dogs: 1
Ignorant unfriendly runners: 1
Women with Devil Dogs: 1
Freezing summers: 1
Weight: 9st 4
Juneathon’s completed: 9/30
Music:
Duran Duran
Manic Street Preachers
Hole

p.s.  Don’t forget to enter my competition to win a copy of the Crisis Cook Book

Powered by sun-dried tomato and jalapeno bread

This morning’s aroma (apart from the cat litter tray) was sun-dried tomato and jalapeno bread and I start to eat it while I’m emptying the dishwasher and making tea and I think stop eating bread, I don’t usually eat before a run and I decide to call it fuelling instead of gluttony and it looks bright and sunny today and I wonder how far I should run and I decide to attempt six miles and think ha ha ha ha ha, yeah, right, I don’t think I’ve run more than four miles in the whole of my “training” and the Reading Half‘s in five weeks and once again I think oops and I go to put my Garmin outside and it says it’s only got 11 hours charge on it and it usually has 13 and I think will I be out running for more than 11 hours? and I think probably not and I tell the cat to go inside and she goes inside and hisses at me and I think why are you hissing at me? you usually save that kind of behaviour for Shaun and Faith No More start singing From Out of Nowhere and I think oh no, I don’t like to leave a song unfinished, but if I wait until the song’s finished, my Garmin will lose its signal and so I cut Faith No More off in their prime and go outside and I get to the marina and there’s a sign that says footpath closed and I wonder if the sign’s lying and it’s really closed and I think anyway, I don’t want the footpath, I want the footbridge and I go up to the bridge and it is shut and I think they need to change their sign and I turn round and go back and then there’s a sign that says footbridge closed and I think that’s a stupid place to put it, after people have already been up to the bridge and found it closed and so I go the other way and a man runs past me with a small dog and he says hello and I get overtaken on the bridge before the Sex Change Pub but I don’t mind being overtaken, after all I’m used to it and then there’s a dog with three legs rolling around and looking very happy  and there’s a man coming down the path with a hoody and gloves and I think HOW SCARY DO YOU LOOK? and on the corner is a man standing by a tree and I wonder why he’s standing by a tree and I decide he’s just waiting for people to play football with and in the car park is a group of people and I wonder why they’re hanging around in the car park and I decide they are also just waiting for people to play football with and I turn right instead of left this time as last time I turned left it was the wrong way and I got lost in the forest like The Cure although I’m not sure if they were singing about Hackney Marshes and then a cyclist starts to slow down and I think please don’t stop and he stops and I think eek but then I see he’s just waiting for his dog and I think phew and two old men walk past me and they say hello and I wonder why I’m not scared of old men or cyclists or runners or people walking dogs  or people walking with other people but if I see any men under the age of 50 on their own over the marshes I have a heart attack and I go past the stables and it smells and it reminds me I’ve got to empty the litter tray and then I get home and somehow I’ve managed to do nearly 6.5 miles.  Yay for me.

 

Splits
Splits 21 February 2009

 

Stats:
Distance: 6.47 miles
Time: 1:11:26
Pace: 11:03 m/m
Calories: 555
Loaves of sun-dried tomato and jalapeno bread: 1
Cats hissing: 1
Runners overtaking me on bridges: 1
Dogs with three legs: 1
Scary looking men with hoody and gloves: 1
Men standing by trees: 1
Groups in the car park: 1
Cyclists stopping to wait for their dog: 1
Smelly stables: 1
Smelly cat litter trays: 1
Music:
Cardiacs
The Killers
Ladyhawke
MGMT
Polyphonic Spree
Libertines