That's what I've been this week.
You may call it a holiday..... But I'm funny like that. We didn't have family holidays as kids, but that's ok I think such is true for many people. I think I was about 12 maybe 13 when we went away for a few days with relatives leaving dad behind. Things at home were fairly stressful, but I found that being away only increased this. I was terrified about what I would find when I got back. To cut a long story short we ended up going home early, and my worries were unfounded. But really not unreasonable if you knew what I did.
When I was older going away meant leaving my nan behind. I never actually made us get on a plane early but it was close at times :-D the thought that something would happen to her while I wasn't there was unbearable and my week would be full of nightmares. Quite ridiculous really but I wouldn't need a psychologist to explain the way I'm wired.
So as much as I look forward to a holiday and that there isn't anyone I'm really worried about right now, once I'm away I have to keep busy to stop me being anxious.
That looks proper nuts written down.
So I did have a nice holiday, but we did come home early..... And something had gone wrong.....I was right!
Washing machine broke :-D
A few phone calls established that it would be cheaper and quicker to get a new one, so shiny new machine is already installed doing its thing on piles of minging kit. Nice!
Ran and swam a couple of times whilst away. Parkrun was average 22.18. I also went the wrong way.Chelmsford 10k was disappointing if I'm honest. 46.40 something. I didn't bounce through it at all. My piriformis is just sore, I prob need to just train for a bit.
Still I will have the v35 trophy at club and its a few years since I have had that.
My best news is that I start my new job tomorrow. I really don't feel like me when I'm not working and this is an exciting opportunity. It's far too late for my nan, but maybe something I'm involved in will stop someone like me watching their grandparent deteriorate in such a depressing hopeless way.
I would say that I'd hope she would be impressed with the way my career has gone but she never forgave me for leaving the bank which was a PROPER job :-D love her :)
Sunday 25 November 2012
Monday 19 November 2012
And the streets are singing with my feet...
And the dawn gives me a shadow I know to be taller.....
That's how a great weekend makes me feel.
Nice innit :-)
Goodness! You say, what did you do? Oh alright then I'll tell ya.
We know what Saturday was, yes yes, parkrun of course. A solid run I guess, 22.14. Started well, faded a fair bit but not too much cos Vicky was running :-D.
Then home to rest! Why? Well cos at 8.30pm I was being picked up to go do the Roding Rally. An 8 hour orienteering event where me and my team (Jen, Gary and Matt) had to find up to 10 checkpoints in Epping Forest using a map, grid refs and cryptic clues.
Simple!
I'd like to state that the problems we had finding the start were because it is so dark in the country side. Ok.
Went to register and, I'm not being funny or anything but certain pass times do seem to attract erm, ah, special people :-D don't worry I will happily include me in that. I got our card and set of instructions and purchased a see through ruler thingy. When I called it that the woman at the desk looked at me like I was bacteria. Which made me giggle. I suspect she wished me dead in the woods, something that actually could happen.
Anyway, loads of groups were huddled outside registration marking their maps with highlighters and one guy waved his map all marked up at us and said 'wanna look? Ha, well you can't' the words tosser and prick immediately came to mind.
Anyway being new at all this, our group decided to work out the first clue and set off just to check we could do it. We sussed which ref it was and set off. Not too far away, and pretty much thought we'd found it straight away. What in fact we had found was lots of other groups all blundering round the woods looking for what turned out to be a one man tent in a small clearing :) still we w we pleased to have got one.
All the rest were unlit but bigger tents, still really hard to find in the dark if you didn't head into the woods in exactly the right place.
We learned that distance and perceived distance bear no relation to each other, it's very easy to go in circles endlessly, cryptic clues are really fucking annoying when you are tired, upturned trees disguise themselves as tents and you must turn off your head torch when going for a wee.
We found 5 cps out of ten. We must have passed a sixth many times but just couldn't find it, we got lost once (4.30am) and had to give up on a couple to make it back in time to be counted.
Once back we had breakfast in the village hall and sat around for a while. Me, Jen and Gary were all due at xc at 10. With a bit too much time to kill we all went home and so it turned out I had about an hour and a half to shower and sort myself out..... So I sat on the sofa gazing into space and went to xc dirty!
I didn't have much enthusiasm I will admit. Walking 15 miles overnight and no sleep do not make for a great performance at a tough xc. Still I had shiny new spikes to try so I had to give it a shot.
The first mile I hated. Too busy, too much concentration on foot placement required. Then it gets into the hills proper and this is better, if harder. At about 3 miles I realise there are people ahead who shouldn't be. So I try to pick it up and am pleased to find I can. The last mile is the first one I hated again so I use this to fuel me and overtake 6 women, picking them off to keep me going. I finish happy that I have done all I could :) and we have enough women counters to score.
Next time I will be faster and I will beat more women (this league we all go off together at the same time, men and women).
Now it feels like every bit of footwear I have is caked in mud, but that will come off. And I'm going on holiday. Yay!!!!!
Back Friday though, and Chelmsford 10k on Sunday.
That's how a great weekend makes me feel.
Nice innit :-)
Goodness! You say, what did you do? Oh alright then I'll tell ya.
We know what Saturday was, yes yes, parkrun of course. A solid run I guess, 22.14. Started well, faded a fair bit but not too much cos Vicky was running :-D.
Then home to rest! Why? Well cos at 8.30pm I was being picked up to go do the Roding Rally. An 8 hour orienteering event where me and my team (Jen, Gary and Matt) had to find up to 10 checkpoints in Epping Forest using a map, grid refs and cryptic clues.
Simple!
I'd like to state that the problems we had finding the start were because it is so dark in the country side. Ok.
Went to register and, I'm not being funny or anything but certain pass times do seem to attract erm, ah, special people :-D don't worry I will happily include me in that. I got our card and set of instructions and purchased a see through ruler thingy. When I called it that the woman at the desk looked at me like I was bacteria. Which made me giggle. I suspect she wished me dead in the woods, something that actually could happen.
Anyway, loads of groups were huddled outside registration marking their maps with highlighters and one guy waved his map all marked up at us and said 'wanna look? Ha, well you can't' the words tosser and prick immediately came to mind.
Anyway being new at all this, our group decided to work out the first clue and set off just to check we could do it. We sussed which ref it was and set off. Not too far away, and pretty much thought we'd found it straight away. What in fact we had found was lots of other groups all blundering round the woods looking for what turned out to be a one man tent in a small clearing :) still we w we pleased to have got one.
All the rest were unlit but bigger tents, still really hard to find in the dark if you didn't head into the woods in exactly the right place.
We learned that distance and perceived distance bear no relation to each other, it's very easy to go in circles endlessly, cryptic clues are really fucking annoying when you are tired, upturned trees disguise themselves as tents and you must turn off your head torch when going for a wee.
We found 5 cps out of ten. We must have passed a sixth many times but just couldn't find it, we got lost once (4.30am) and had to give up on a couple to make it back in time to be counted.
Once back we had breakfast in the village hall and sat around for a while. Me, Jen and Gary were all due at xc at 10. With a bit too much time to kill we all went home and so it turned out I had about an hour and a half to shower and sort myself out..... So I sat on the sofa gazing into space and went to xc dirty!
I didn't have much enthusiasm I will admit. Walking 15 miles overnight and no sleep do not make for a great performance at a tough xc. Still I had shiny new spikes to try so I had to give it a shot.
The first mile I hated. Too busy, too much concentration on foot placement required. Then it gets into the hills proper and this is better, if harder. At about 3 miles I realise there are people ahead who shouldn't be. So I try to pick it up and am pleased to find I can. The last mile is the first one I hated again so I use this to fuel me and overtake 6 women, picking them off to keep me going. I finish happy that I have done all I could :) and we have enough women counters to score.
Next time I will be faster and I will beat more women (this league we all go off together at the same time, men and women).
Now it feels like every bit of footwear I have is caked in mud, but that will come off. And I'm going on holiday. Yay!!!!!
Back Friday though, and Chelmsford 10k on Sunday.
Tuesday 6 November 2012
Rumour has it......
That I will be reacquainting myself with ultra running next year.
The man-suit needs an airing :-)
Anyway, it's been a couple of weeks hasn't it. Last week was parkrun Saturday 21.55, decent run and then billericay 10k on the Sunday.
I thought I could aim for around 45. Hmmm. Nice plan. Totally not going to happen in stair rod rain. The road was flooded across in about 6 places. This was slightly (only slightly) amusing the first time as I waded through calf deep water. Really fucking annoying by the end when my feet were really painful from cold and sliding around in my trainers. 47.07 and 14th lady out of about 190. That bit was pleasing and I will take away the fact that this time last year I would have been no where near that position.
Then a hectic week at work as I'm leaving soon and we have found something interesting, this on the face of it is great but frustrating that I am unlikely to be able to follow it up like I want. On the other hand a review I wrote has been finally accepted and is a nice way to end a contract.
This weekend was parkrun again, 22.16 in the rain. Ok, not astonishing, but I am trying to treat it as a decent speed work session and that it is. My 7th first place and i'd like someone to come and beat me now please :)
Today my aim was 14 miles with middle 12 at mp. I struggled to go out for it because.... Well I know it will be hard and running round home alone is now quite tedious. I got a bit pissed off at 6m when I went off the pace suddenly. A short meltdown later and a bit of sensibleness and I got back on track. I think I did 7 out of the 12 at or less than mp, the other 5 were between 8.30 and 8.45 except for last one which was 9 .....oops!
It will take some work I know. At least I did it I guess.
So this week will be busy being my last but that's ok I have the following week off..... After what could turn out to be a VERY interesting weekend.
I think that's it really. I saw a couple of blogs this week that made me think. I read a few forum threads that annoyed me. It strikes me that social media as useful as it is allows us (any of us I'm not excluding myself) to hold forth on topics we know nothing of. Maybe we want to know and I suppose that's commendable, but sometimes I think, just keep quiet eh, contemplate it quietly with yourself. Whilst what you are writing might seem reasonable to you someone who isn't you might be coming from a completely different place and actually be quite disturbed by it.
And not everyone wants to share everything.
The man-suit needs an airing :-)
Anyway, it's been a couple of weeks hasn't it. Last week was parkrun Saturday 21.55, decent run and then billericay 10k on the Sunday.
I thought I could aim for around 45. Hmmm. Nice plan. Totally not going to happen in stair rod rain. The road was flooded across in about 6 places. This was slightly (only slightly) amusing the first time as I waded through calf deep water. Really fucking annoying by the end when my feet were really painful from cold and sliding around in my trainers. 47.07 and 14th lady out of about 190. That bit was pleasing and I will take away the fact that this time last year I would have been no where near that position.
Then a hectic week at work as I'm leaving soon and we have found something interesting, this on the face of it is great but frustrating that I am unlikely to be able to follow it up like I want. On the other hand a review I wrote has been finally accepted and is a nice way to end a contract.
This weekend was parkrun again, 22.16 in the rain. Ok, not astonishing, but I am trying to treat it as a decent speed work session and that it is. My 7th first place and i'd like someone to come and beat me now please :)
Today my aim was 14 miles with middle 12 at mp. I struggled to go out for it because.... Well I know it will be hard and running round home alone is now quite tedious. I got a bit pissed off at 6m when I went off the pace suddenly. A short meltdown later and a bit of sensibleness and I got back on track. I think I did 7 out of the 12 at or less than mp, the other 5 were between 8.30 and 8.45 except for last one which was 9 .....oops!
It will take some work I know. At least I did it I guess.
So this week will be busy being my last but that's ok I have the following week off..... After what could turn out to be a VERY interesting weekend.
I think that's it really. I saw a couple of blogs this week that made me think. I read a few forum threads that annoyed me. It strikes me that social media as useful as it is allows us (any of us I'm not excluding myself) to hold forth on topics we know nothing of. Maybe we want to know and I suppose that's commendable, but sometimes I think, just keep quiet eh, contemplate it quietly with yourself. Whilst what you are writing might seem reasonable to you someone who isn't you might be coming from a completely different place and actually be quite disturbed by it.
And not everyone wants to share everything.
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