An Embarrassing Moment

Checking this year’s Thunder Run results ‘our’ team of five seems to have gone ahead with only four of them and they did 14 laps. There was a big gap in the middle overnight where I assume no one went round. I think we were well out of that.

On Tuesday, L is working in London where there are so many police around. She seems quite pleased to have been searched by a very cute police dog. I assume they were checking she wasn’t off to bomb Boris.

It’s very hot and sweaty on the bike when I cycle in to work. It’s also very embarrassing on the way home when I couldn’t unclip my foot from my pedal at QMC Island and had to opt to topple sideways onto the grass verge. It seems one of the bolts securing the cleat to my shoe has come out meaning the cleat now just spins, leaving my shoe stuck on the pedal.

It was a right pain to prize it off the pedal when I get home but I manage it eventually without damaging anything.

I am then off work for the rest of the week and spend the whole of Wednesday at Locko Park, getting sunburnt and insect bitten, where we setting up for our dog show this weekend.

I manage to get away early evening because L and Daughter have talked me into doing

‘The Run’ with them. We have done this several times before. Four years in a row in fact from 2008 to 2011 but not since. It starts from the Navigation Inn in Breaston and is a 4 mile run.

We used to get a mug for doing it, in the first three years, and it still seems a rather retro venture by only having a postal entry form. Which they seem to have photocopied and uploaded upside down.

Unfortunately L can barely walk so doesn’t run and Daughter is injured too, so I end up doing a run I was only doing this because those two were but I enjoy it. At 29:32 I was only a minute slower than my 2011 time when I recall I was injured, although a full four minutes slower than my best in 2010.

(Wednesday 24^th July)

Certain Catastrophe

On Thursday, L and I have a pre-tennis tennis knock up before her class. It’s a bit wet underfoot, actually very wet underfoot, and L is worried that I'll injure myself but then, if we don’t play, I’m quite capable of injuring myself in our garden while kicking balls for the dogs.

I don’t cycle on Thursday and I also don’t cycle on Friday as for the second day running the weather forecast on Radio 5 warns cyclists that they face certain catastrophe if they venture out in the elements or words to that affect. The forecast predicts heavy rain and hail but they were wrong on Thursday and they’ll probably be wrong again. I know they’re just winding me up and I’m a fool to believe them but I get on the bus again.

In fact when I go out for a sandwich at lunch time I am more concerned about heatstroke than hail but it does start to rain later, although not that dramatically. I hope no one’s planning a dog jog tonight. Ah, L and Daughter are. Just to get the dogs out of the way while I get my massage.

On Saturday we go up to Sherwood Pines to Parkrun and then in the afternoon, well teatime obviously for bloody TV, Derby play Leeds in the 1st Leg of the Championship Play Off Semi Final.

My Leeds supporting friend leaves his darkened room long enough to watch it, likening it to a TV series you’ve long ago lost interest in but you still force yourself to watch it through to it’s grisly and disappointing conclusion. Then Leeds win 1-0 and he’s suddenly looking forward to the next episode.

I go in person, via a visit to see L’s Dad in hospital, and even bump into Son. Who kept his attendance quiet, probably because he’s always a jinx.

Meanwhile in Derby itself, L says it’s like WW2. Lots of fighting and they’ve brought in the police dogs. She questions who’d be a police officer or a police dog? Daughter and the Lad obviously. They’d sort them out.

(Saturday 11^th May)