Good Weight Training

First thing on Friday, I get an email from the Royal Mail telling me that my package, which is my 100^th parkrun t-shirt, has been delivered at 07:42 but it's not there waiting for me when I arrive at work. So clearly it hasn't been delivered and it turns up at 11:00. There’s a lot of this going on at the moment and there’s really not much point having parcel tracking if the delivery drivers are scanning stuff before they’ve even delivered them.

L tells me she’s mindlessly googling ‘undertraining for a marathon’ as if it’s not something that everybody does. Which she does acknowledge as she reads yet another blog from someone who’s allegedly not trained but managed to drag themselves round in four hours.

I’m not too sure she’ll need to worry about being undertrained as there must already be serious doubts about whether the Brighton Marathon will still go ahead. Paris and Barcelona have been postponed until later in the year while Rome has been cancelled outright. Barcelona is now the week after the Great South, so I pop it in the diary. Just in case.

Brighton have offered all the UK entrants from those races a place in theirs. Somebody there is clearly feeling confident that it will go ahead. I’m afraid I don’t share their optimism.

In fact, I’m fast regarding next Sunday’s Ashby 20 as my ‘A’ race for the first half of this year. It’s still on at the moment but they say they won’t be handing jelly babies out this year in case they hand over the virus at the same time. It’s not a loss to me, they always try to choke me anyway.

L has a night out in Waterstones planned for Friday. Her friend has to cancel at the last minute but she goes anyway to pick up a book she’s pre-ordered. Then comes home laden down with several, which I suppose is at least good weight training, but she did say she was only going for one. She corrects me. She said she’d only ordered one book. Not the same thing.

On Saturday we do Wollaton Parkrun as my 101^st and bump into our fellow parkrunners from Bramcote\Berlin. Daughter doesn’t join us so we take the car to manage the MD problem. L then does Pilates after which we visit the Derby Runner, where she buys some Hoka shoes, and then we go see her folks.

We stay in later and are largely AF because Sunday is the Retford Half Marathon which goes ahead. It is run by Retford Athletic club and starts again at Retford Oaks Academy where this year we manage to arrive early enough to get in the car park.

The race opens with a brief trip through the town before heading out on to country roads, with one of those annoying out and back sections in the middle to make up the distance. It is on closed roads for the majority of the route with just the last mile back to Retford on opened roads where you need to precariously time your overtaking while running on the narrow pavement.

My time is 1:45:09 this year. That’s not bad and just 9 seconds down on last year, so at least I’m consistent for once. They hand out a running vest at the end, which is different, but won’t be of much use to the majority.

Then I rush back to Derby because football is still going ahead at the moment and Derby have a 3pm kick off against Blackburn. I drop L off four miles from home because she wants to top her mileage up. I bet she was glad of the refreshing shower that the weather gave her.

We go out in Stapleford in the evening and bring home an Indian takeaway from the Park Tandoori.

(Sunday 8^th March)

Hobson’s Choice

The park is locked and not for the first time this week. MD is terribly disappointed because he doesn’t get his ball chuck with L. Doggo and I, following up behind, still get our old man’s amble but it’s not the same not ending up with a sniff on the park. Once it starts to get a bit colder and darker the city council forget about us dog walkers.

I’m in the car today. Reason one is that I head to the Derby Runner at lunchtime to try to get either a replacement battery pack for the broken head torch or a brand new head torch. They don’t have any battery packs and the choice of just one pretty basic head torch. So, it’s Hobson’s choice. Either take the horse in the stall nearest the door or none at all. I ride off into the sunset with my new steed.

Reason two is the race itself which is the Night Trail at East Leake. This starts at 7pm, so it’s a case of a quick change at home and then back out again to the start at Rushcliffe Golf Club. Finding the golf club in the dark countryside proves to be the hardest part of the evening.

The run itself, for saying I’m not an off-road person, goes really well. The five mile route takes in a mix of bridal pathways, loose surface footpaths and sections over grassy fields. Naturally I lose my footing several times but unlike last time I ran at night on the Thunder Run I remain vertical.

It is well marked and well marshalled although most of the glow sticks along the route seem to lack the vital ingredients of glow. I also remember seeing signs for the water station at around half way but didn’t actually see the station itself. On reflection perhaps the three people stood by a parked car was it but it wasn’t obvious and my then it was too late to go back. 

At the finish we get a very nice medal, if you like that sort of thing and amazing I come in 13th out of 90. Wow.

There were rumours of a bar but the golf club has been booked for a private function and I don't think muddy runners are not invited so we head home.

When we get home it is to find that Daughter has arrived for the weekend and for her job interview tomorrow. It’s good to see her and she has already tried out the new shower. That’ll be £1 please.

 (Friday 11^th November)

Security Restraints

I take the car to work because I’m too injured to cycle and then walk into town to find a bank, I need to complete the Kendal house purchase today.

It’s been that long since I went to my branch, that when I get there I find it shut down and boarded up. I had to get my phone out and google where they had moved to.

I did try to transfer the money on line but it wouldn’t let me do such a big amount due to ‘security restraints’. Despite having logged in with two passwords and then having to do two authorisations using one of those calculator things that you put your card into.

In the branch all they ask me to do it to put my card into their own calculator thing (same as mine) and enter my pin. That’s all. No extra id required or anything. How can that be more secure?

Back home, I scoop up L from her walk back from work and whisk her off to the Derby Runner shop so that she can get some new trainers to enable her to bounce around the Alsager 5 Mile race on Sunday.

A slightly different Friday night, L has given up alcohol, temporarily I think, and therefore by proxy so have I (sort of). I can't really sit and glug a bottle of red on my own, what would folk say. It won’t do me any harm. Although on reflection, it does seem a good opportunity to dispose of a bottle of London Pride I got for Christmas. London Pride isn’t proper drinking is it? 

(Friday 1^st February)