Final Training

Sunday sees my final training race before Project Brighton comes to fruition. It’s the Rutland Spring Half Marathon at Rutland Water. The organisers have helpfully arranged for car parking to be over a km away to give everyone a decent warm up. Nice of them.

The route is on a mix of tarmac and compacted gravel\grit, which isn’t my ideal surface but then what is these days. My legs feel tired throughout which is either due to over training or under training. One of those things. My pace unfortunately matches a group of girls who decide to chit-chat all the way around, which is rather annoying. Both listening to it and the fact that they have the breath to chat, unlike me.

Despite a much flatter course than Sheffield last week my pace is slower and I run 2:03, over four minutes slower.

Later we go to my Niece’s 18^th birthday celebrations at Le Bistrot Pierre. We even manage to get my Mum to come along with us. The restaurant is one of those that annoyingly asks you to pre-order well in advance but then once here, rather bizarrely, tells several people that they have just run out of what they had pre-ordered. Work that one out.

Monday sees a very quiet morning walk because it appears that the local schools have already finished for Easter. It was almost like those halcyon lockdown days.

Some workmen arrive next door to do the garden, venturing into territory that has remained largely untouched by human hands for many a year and their efforts are accompanied by an abundant amount of swearing. They do tell me that someone is definitely moving in hence their travails.

They soon disappear having barely scraped the surface but return the next day with some heftier equipment.

The lad has a great day with the workmen one side petrol strimming the grass, weeds and brambles while one of our other neighbours has their occasional dog lodger visiting. He and the Lad don’t seem to get on. MD decides to keep out of it and maintains a low profile by my feet.

On Wednesday L and I go down to the Council House to arrange a Civil Partnership. We have to take in our passports and the ubiquitous utility bill. I take in our Council tax bill which I think is ironic because I’m taking it home from where it was issued and surely I am showing something they already knew about but they don’t see the irony it. L also has to prove she’s divorced but not that she was married, so she could have just neglected to mention that she had been married at all.  

The actual ‘ceremony’ will also be on a Wednesday morning because they only do these things on a Wednesday morning... very helpful.

On Thursday I have a Committee meeting at the Dog and Duck in Shardlow and on Friday the Lad is at the Vets for his annual MOT and booster while L chauffeurs my parents to my Dad’s hospital appointment.

(Friday 8^th April)