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

A birthday blog

Happy birthday to me
I am now forty-three
Happy birthday dear JogBlog
And yes, I’ve been for a jog

After opening my presents (an octopus sculpted by the mega-talented Rich (aka Ume Toys, aka Joggerblogger),

martin

a pair of cat socks, a pair of giraffe socks, a pair of pig socks, the Miranda book, a red polka dot dressing gown and a day off cat-litter-tray-cleaning-duty from iliketocount, and a notepad from Travelling Hopefully)

notepad

and eating Ferrero Rocher for breakfast, I said I’m going for a birthday run, do you want come with me? thus completely forgetting how much I hate running with other people. As far as I’m concerned, socialising should be kept for the pub.

But, anyway, he said yes and so we went out for a rainy run. It did mean I got to wear my new Howies running top. It’s made from merino wool so it’s nice and warm. When it arrived, I thought it was too nice to be worn for running and I quite fancied wearing it with jeans to the pub (although not tonight as birthdays are dresses days). After putting it on though, it’s a bit too see-through to wear as normal clothes – if you look closely, you can see my belly button (this also acts as a warning to not look too closely if you don’t want to see my belly button).

howies-running-topThe run was wet. My feet got soaked. iliketocount tried to loop off and catch me back up until I reminded him of the ‘with’ bit of ‘running with me’.

So, the presents have been opened, the run has been done, the dress is on – time for the pub!

dress-side

Er, don’t know

I asked Shaun for a title for my blog, and he said ‘er, don’t know’, so that’ll have to do.

Yesterday evening saw me do an extra Juneathon after my run by cycling to the Good Intent pub 3.2 miles away for beer and food. And what fantastic food and service it was, too. There was a mix up with my meal (they’d put the apple crumble topping on my leek and Wensleydale bake instead of the topping it should have had) and said I wouldn’t be charged for it. As my meal was replaced so quickly and efficiently and charmingly by the waitress, I was happy to pay for it, but the manager refused my money. How impressive is that?

Anyway, after our pub visit, I stayed up drinking more beer and watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and once again going to bed in the early hours, only once again to be woken up before my government recommendation of eight hours sleep by someone ringing a bell and telling me to get up as they wanted to go to the supermarket. I replied by saying I was doing Juneathon first and so Shaun went to the supermarket by himself and came back with what appeared to be the contents of the fat bastard aisle. Pizza and cream cakes for dinner it is then.

I said to Shaun I was going to run up to Tesco, then back through the little park to home which is about half a mile but he said I had to do more than that and gave me another route and I said but that’s about two miles and he said it’s about one point eight miles and so I measured it on Gmaps and it came out at about one point six miles and so I thought ok then, that’s probably a better Juneathon effort and so I went out into the rain and the wind and the cold and burnt off about half the cream cake I will be eating later.

Stats
Distance: 1.57 miles
Time: 16:11
Pace: 10:20 m/m
Calories: 164
8 hour sleeps: 0
Contents of fat bastard aisles: 1

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