Apologies In Early

L is very amorous this morning and clearly getting her apologies in early for deserting me this Friday.

There are now photos up on Facebook that seem to imply that Son did indeed make it to Japan. Either that or someone is very good with Photoshop.

The oddity of it being a Bank Holiday week is that I end up doing the shopping on a Thursday rather than a Monday. The calf is not bad, at least I made it round Sainsburys ok, but I'm not sure it’s up to a half marathon. Squash tonight will give it a good test.

My opponent would of course have cried off at even a sniff of a minor injury such is his worry that he might lose a match. This is why he isn’t as fit as he should be. I’d exercise through most things.

I lose 3-2 which I always think is almost as good as win. Sadly there are no dark ales on at the Navigation afterwards other than a so called 'craft' ale which I refuse to pay the extra price for what is after all an inferior keg product. As it’s a nice evening we sit outside which enables the dogs to join us. Typically L dumps them with us before nipping off to nab another beat box.

(Thursday 5^th May)

Operation 70.3

We had a few drinks last night but not too many, or so I thought. L claims not to recall a lot of the evening... tut tut, including how amorous she was. So when I give her chapter and verse on it, she doesn’t know if I’m winding her up or not.

I'm back on the bike today, to top up that improving fitness.

Sort of inspired I enter us for the Cross Bay Challenge. It will be a useful training run.

I will loathe it but it’s the sort of thing you have to say you’ve done at some point. Although the means of proving it, e.g. the t-shirt, is extra.

It could be done as a double header with the Great North Swim the day before... so I book that as well. My first open water swim entry and this was before the first drink of the evening. It has to be done at some point if ‘Operation 70.3’, a project hopefully culminating at the 2014 Nottingham Outlaw Half Ironman, is going to happen. 70.3 miles is the distance covered by swimming, running and cycling.

So I book into the one mile swim, my smart arse partner books into the two mile, naturally. She says I’ll never forget my first Lakeland swim. I’m sure I won’t, particularly if it’s spent clinging to one of the rescue canoes.

(Friday 26^th April)

Powder Dry, Bone Dry

L reckons that we should both be getting up and getting fit rather than getting amorous in bed. I disagree, plenty of muscles group that can be worked on here and all at seven calories per minute (so they say). Then because I’m on the bike today, I have to get a real shift on to get to work on time because I’m running late which does my legs loads of good, I hope.

As I’m on the bike, dodging potholes, I best mention the recent University of Nottingham study which reckons they can improve average life of a pothole repair from four years to fifteen. Hang on a sec. Four years! Who are they kidding. Four months more like. The ones I cycle over are re-repaired every year and even that isn’t often enough.

I have another look at the Olympic tickets website. There seems to be availability for a lot of things at the moment, apart from athletics and cycling of course. One wonders why all these tickets weren’t on sale in the first place... plus they’re limiting people to one set of tickets each now, which would have been a good idea in the first place. I’m keeping my powder dry (it's bone dry) for an assault on the modern pentathlon and the triathlon, which are added tomorrow. I just hope that everyone else isn’t planning the same.

After work, I pedal to the pool for a swim. L says she's rather jealous but she wouldn't be if she saw the queue, which is out of the door. It's an almost exclusively female queue so I assume they're all going to be booking into bodypump, zumba, pilates, chairobics or whatever the current fashion is but no, they all pass through saying ‘swim please’. So OMG it's going to be busy. If it had been all been men I'd have been running in the opposite direction because it would have been competitive hell at the top end of the pool. I know it's going to be busy but at least it’ll be scenic.

Actually it’s hell. Twenty-eight swimmers across five lanes, the sixth lane is shut for a lesson and there are eight in the fun pool. These morning swimmer like L get it so easy. I make it a quick one.

(Wednesday 16th May)