A Plan Comes To Fruition

Let me tell you about the Heb3 Challenge. Which is to complete at least three of the five Western Isles Half Marathons - Stornoway, Benbecula, Skye, Barra or Harris in any one year. Apparently this is the longest running series of half marathons in Scotland and probably the most ridiculous for someone from the centre of England to attempt. So, here we go.



The first challenge was to get an entry into the hugely popular Barra race, which we managed, despite it selling out in 40 minutes. The second challenge is the 530 miles from Nottingham to Uig on the Isle of Skye, from where we will catch a ferry. Which will have to do twice. We couldn’t make Stornoway which was last week, so will return at the end of June to take in Barra and Harris. We could have done Skye of course but that would have been far too easy.

For all this we will get a t-shirt, complete with the Heb3 logo. We like little things like that. If we could have done all five, and this would have been a near impossibility in travel, cost and holiday allowances they would have overprinted our t-shirts with 'rinn mise na coig' on the back. Which I thought was Gaelic for ‘smart arse’ but apparently just means ‘I did the five’.

As we’re heading up the M6 on route to Scotland we stop off in Stoke to catch the Olympic Torch relay which kicks off from Hanley at 7am this morning in the hands of Tony Pulis, the Stoke City manager.

We drive in along the Cobridge Road to catch it on Waterloo Road and get stopped by the police, who have turned all the traffic lights to red to let the entourage through. Hey presto front row seats.



Sadly it’s only the sponsor’s vehicles and once they’ve come through we have to run back to our abandoned car as the lights go green again. Hurriedly we park up somewhere in time to see, rather appropriately, running legend ‘Blind’ Dave Heeley and his dog Seamus handover the flame to another runner, whose name we don't know.



Dave Heeley was the first blind man to run seven marathons in seven days on seven continents and last year he ran 10 marathons in 10 days for Macmillan Cancer Support.



So far, at least our first plan has come to fruition.

Then it’s back to what turns out to be 12 hour drive, if you include the few stops we had, doing one hour stints each. The early part of which is in on-off rain, until we got into Scotland where it quickly started to fine up.

Arriving in Uig we are understandably both starving and gagging for a drink. Up on the hill the Ferry Inn looks the most promising. Looks can be deceptive. We’ve come all this way to find that the local pub does not serve the Isle of Skye ales that are brewed 200 yards away and the only real ale, from Greene King of all places, has come further than we have.

If this wasn’t bad enough, the miserable landlord mutters something about new Scottish licensing laws not permitting food to be served outside on insurance grounds, which sounds like b******** to me, and we can’t take the dogs inside despite the fact that his totally customer free bar is a rather spartan wooden floored affair and therefore very appropriate for dogs. He clearly has no wish for us to buy four rounds of drinks and two two-course meals off him? Estimated cost... upwards of £60... Fair enough.

We depart, as we don’t wish to selfishly put the dogs back in the car that they’ve just spent around 12 hours in just so that we can eat. The Bakur Bar on the pier comes to the rescue.



They don’t allow dogs in either but they are more than happy to serve us food, ale from the Isle of Skye brewery and even whiskey, outside.

(Thursday 31st May)

A Messy Compromise

I take the bike to work today, which upsets our dogs whom I pass on the way.

The cycling is I suppose last minute panic training for this weekend’s half marathon. L's training is perhaps a bit more structured as she’s entered the Beeston 5 Mile race tonight.

She heads there straight from work, whilst I bike home, scoop the dogs into the car and head over to support. My excuse is that these five milers are a little too fast for me these days, my mind wants to go faster than my legs do, which usually results in a messy compromise. So I’ll watch.

L seems to have no such problems with a PB for the year.

(Wednesday 30th May)

Heroic Failure

L heads over to Leamington today to see her ‘baby boy’ on the occasion of his 21st birthday. She has to change trains in Derby, so I leave the car at work so that she can get off there on the way back, pick up the car and then, in her words, ‘rescue me from myself’. I’m running home. At least it'll save me upsetting some poor bus driver who doesn’t want some sweaty bloke on his bus.

The long drawn out Olympic ticket saga continues afresh today as road cycling tickets go on sale. Twice I request a ticket for the Time Trial Finish and twice, after ten minutes or so, the search comes back telling me its reserved tickets for me. Each time I select my credit card, type in the security code, tick the T&C box and pressed 'proceed' only to get told ‘ha ha fooled you, we haven’t really reserved any tickets for you’.

By the third search they'd all gone, of course. So I’m not very happy at all but this is what the Olympic spirit is all about, great success (rare ones) and heroic failure.

Apparently Mrs Bradley Wiggins had the same problems as me, so I’m in good company. Whilst a spokeswoman for the London 2012 organising committee brushed off yet another ticket debacle as ‘sheer volume of demand’ that caused people with tickets reserved to be returned to the back of a 20 minute queue, only to find that once they again reached the front the cupboard was bare.

At least it’s not quite so hot today when I start running but still I leave off the lycra that I usually wear under my shorts. Big mistake. I now have sore thighs where they rubbed together.

I had jokingly suggested to L that she checks the gutters as she drives along. Then I see her driving quite slowly past me in Borrowash, probably doing just that. Although if she really did want to ‘rescue me from myself’ she shouldn’t have stopped then and not at our prearranged meeting point four miles down the road.

We have arranged to meet in Wetherspoons car park in Stapleford, which sounds quite covert, or if they haven’t got a car park, in one of the dodgy side streets. Although she actually parks at Lidl, which is perhaps the same thing.

She’s had quite a day in Leamington. Son has not only confessed that he needs some smart clothes, and should trust a mother’s judgement in these matters but has said he wants to join a gym and get fit. Whatever is the world coming to?

(Tuesday 29th May)

A Desperate Bonio Shortage

As we’re off to Scotland on Thursday there’s no great pressing need to do any shopping today, apart from the fact that there’s a desperate Bonio shortage in our household. I have suspicions that someone has been helping themselves but can’t prove it.

L bemoans being at after such a good weekend. She’s only there two days this week. There’s no pleasing some people. She’s off again tomorrow, visiting Son in Leamington.

In the evening I drop L off, because she’s running, on the way to dog training where I thoroughly expect to be training on yesterday’s team course which was set by our trainer, but we’re not. Probably thankfully, as we made such a mess of it.

(Monday 28th May)

Some Tribute

L has booked a coach to take her up to Sheffield this morning for 5:20am! The Sheffield Half Marathon starts at 9am and the first train does run until 9.30 on a Sunday. As I have the car, an eye wateringly early coach appears to be the only option. I valiantly get up early to take her to the coach station.

The boys and I briefly return to bed before we get up again, to head to day two of the Nottingham dog show.

Today will be harder than yesterday, it seems hotter and we have the Crufts team event as well. Not that either of the dogs look up to it. Not sure what Doggo’s excuse is, he only had one run yesterday.

Up in Sheffield, people are slipping into their furry teddy bear outfits... they must be mad, in this heat. Poor old MD can’t take his furry outfit off.

The team course is a right stinker and set by one of my trainers. I'll have words later. As I have been in charge of picking our four teams, it is rather pleasing to see our A team come 4th. Which at least means I’ve picked the right team as the A team. Our other three teams don’t do as well but have a ball which was the general idea. MD had lots of faults but as I said it was a tough course, even the winners had 10 faults.

L has done the deed in Sheffield, recorded a good time despite the heat and is now sipping Chardonnay by the fountains. Meanwhile we’re having more weaves problems but it is hot. Too hot for both of us. I return him to the nice cool car to chill for a bit.

It does the trick and on the next run, MD gets his weaves right but has a pole down. Apparently that got us a rosette for 24th. Better than nothing and not bad I suppose out of 250. Doggo is again clear in his vets but again outside the placings. Then we head home via the coach station to collect L.

In the evening I'm down at the Rescue Rooms to see Peter Hook and his band The Light. First though are a band that Hook himself signed to Hacienda Records, Salford’s Humanizer. They combine two musical forces of the Manchester music scene, dance and indie into songs that are complex, ambitious animals. Lots of bass and heavy guitars but at the heart the pulsing technology of a dance beat. It's something that's been done a lot recently but somehow after a slightly indifferent start Humanizer quickly grow on me. Clearly they have something the others don't. Well worth a listen and listen I will.

Peter Hook and the Light take the stage to the Pogues’ ‘Dirty Old Town’. Whether this is a statement of sorts on the mud being flung from both sides after his acrimonious split from New Order, I don’t know but I thought I’d start the rumour anyway.

Post split, Hook decided to revisit the work of their former incarnation, Joy Division, and with his band he’s been playing both of the JD's famous albums 'Unknown Pleasures’ and ‘Closer’ in their entirety, as well as more recently the cobbled together compilation 'Still’.

None of which went down particularly well with those remaining in New Order. In fact Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris viewed it as something akin to sacrilege. Hook’s actually gone further and been reinventing some of the songs with X Factor’s Rowetta on vocals. For which, Sumner and Morris might have a point.

There’s no Rowetta tonight however, which is fine because I’d rather hear what Hooky himself can do with the material. Tonight its 1979’s 'Unknown Pleasures’, which is fairly obvious from the fact that we have the album cover as both the backdrop behind the drum kit and on Hooky’s t-shirt. Actually it's good to get the first album first although I prefer 'Closer', which will hopefully come to Nottingham another day.

They don’t start with 'Unknown Pleasures’ though. First up is ‘Exercise One’ a track recorded during sessions for the album but not included on it. Then follows ‘No Love Lost’ and ‘Leaders Of Men’ from their debut EP ‘An Ideal for Living’ from 1978, the rest of which surfaces later. Then it’s ‘Glass’ and the splendid ‘Digital’ from their label’s ‘A Factory Sample’ also from back in ’78.

It seems we’re getting almost a chronological history lesson here as they then, five songs in, launch into the full album set.

The crowd are already impressed, have gone pretty much ape for every song so far and continue to do so all night. A factor in this is probably that the majority of the audience tonight, me included, will never have heard the bulk of this material live before. This, I guess, is why we're here and why I think Sumner and Morris are wrong. There never will be a tour by a fully reformed Joy Division because there can't be. I think Hooky understands this. It would be nice if the others were on board but they’re not and tonight it doesn’t seem to matter because what we get is simply terrific.

Hook and his band deliver a respectful and faithful reproduction of every Joy Division song they take on, not just recreating them but giving them an awesome power than you simply cannot get just from the records. The Light have a terrific guitarist in Nat Watson, an amazing drummer in Paul Kehoe and then of course there’s Hook’s bass, although he shares bass duties tonight with son Jack, who is no shirk himself. There’s also a keyboardist in Andy Poole and you can’t fault the passion that any of them put into it. Making the songs seem rather fresh and modern, not at all dated.

Vocally, things are different of course. Hook isn’t Ian Curtis and probably doesn’t want to be. Yet his vocals seem to fit the material almost as well. It helps that his singing has improved immeasurably since the days of Revenge and Monaco.

Meanwhile the whole thing is conducted amongst one of the best and most enthusiastic atmospheres I’ve seen at a gig for some time. At times, it's actually quite moving.

There are so many highlights but the trio of tracks that form the midpoint of the album - ‘New Dawn Fades’, ‘She's Lost Control’ and ‘Shadowplay’ are particularly outstanding. Not just because during ‘She’s Lost Control’ Hook appears to wave at me, even if it does turn out that I'm stood next to his Mrs.

Then after what seems like no time at all, an immensely powerful ‘Interzone’ segues in to the dark ‘I Remember Nothing’, which closes the album and the set.

The band return for an encore, some of which is drawn from ‘Closer’. ‘Isolation’ and ‘Twenty Four Hours’ are sandwiched between ‘Dead Souls’ and an amazing performance of ‘Ceremony’ before they leave the stage again.

Is that it? No. The band return a second time to treat us to the rest of ‘An Ideal for Living’ in the shape of ‘Warsaw’ and ‘Failures’ but still they’re not finished as they complete the second of two four track encores.

Which isn’t bad coming from a band, in both Joy Division and New Order forms, that have been notorious in the past for not doing them. I've never seen New Order do an encore. Although I see their current line up are doing them these days and also doing the odd Joy Division track as well. Wasn’t that supposed to be sacrilege? Lol.

As The Light get around to probably Joy Division's most famous numbers ‘Transmission’ and of course ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ you almost want to burst in to tears in gratitude. Then when it really is the end, Hooky sheds his t-shirt and throws it triumphantly into the crowd. Job done. Point made.

You could call The Light a tribute band, and maybe we should, but OMG it was some tribute.

I meet L afterwards in the Ropewalk, which is open until 12.30am even on a Sunday but closes early tonight because the students have deserted it at the moment. I guess they're at home revising or writing those final assignments. It’s a shame because the Nutbrook More is rather nice and I only get chance for two, even then I had to promise that the second would be a swift one.

Punching Above Our Weight

It's Nottingham Dog Show this weekend in Newark and we’re there both days. The sun is really strong but thankfully there's a cooling breeze. Though I still feel the sunburn could be quite bad tonight...

MD starts off with a pretty good run. He gets his tunnels, his contacts, clears all his jumps and then comes out his weaves. There’s always something.

All his courses this weekend are for Grades 3-5 and as he’s a 3, we’re going to be attempting to punch above our weight all weekend. Whereas when shows put on Grade 1-3 courses we really should be looking for the win, here it’s more about getting round.

His next course is a particularly tough one but we make a really good fist of it. He just knocked one pole or else we'd have been clear. When I look at the times, I see that rather annoyingly the leader is two whole seconds slower than us but of course, they didn’t have a pole down.

We’re back to messing up the weaves in his last run but then good old reliable Doggo goes clear in the vets, although finishes outside the rosettes. At least we got to see Pudsey, jumping not dancing on this occasion.

I text L to enquire if we’re allowed home yet. She's glossing, as in skirting boards and stuff. Apparently they’ll be a roll of clingfilm by the door... hairs are not welcome and anything with four paws might have to suitably wrapped if it wants a roof over its head tonight. Well, I think she just means the dogs.

Having circumnavigated the house rules we have a night in with ‘the Hump’. E.g. Eurovision.

It wasn't good. Engelbert was only kept off the bottom by Norway and finished hundreds of points behind the winners, Sweden, and the Russian grannies. It's a European disappoint of the like we won't see again until, well next month, when England take to the pitch.

(Saturday 26th May)

Too Hot For That Sort Of Thing

I decide against another hot run and get the bike out instead. Interestingly so does L. She has got the Great Notts Bike Ride to train for.

Thankfully nobody tries to race me, it’s much too hot for that sort of thing but I always get sucked in.

I had to reblog this

Won’t work though.

Thanks to 'the diary of an urban cyclist' from whence it was taken.

We opt for a laid back night in with David Soul and Showaddywaddy. A chilled night in, as in chilled white wine or red even.

(Friday 25th May)

A Stint In The Sauna

Rather bizarrely I have a slight hangover this morning which is odd considering I had only 4%ers, whereas on Saturday I had nothing under 5%, several 8%’s, a much larger quantity and was absolutely fine.

L cancels her pump class tonight in order to run and doesn’t get put up against the wall and shot as squash players do if they attempt to cancel with less than 24 hours notice. Of course they aren’t trying to phase out swimming like they are with squash. A process that will be complete when the two remaining centres with courts in Nottingham are demolished (at Beechdale) and sold off (at Portland).

On the plus side Beechdale’s replacement pool is going to be a full Olympic jobbie. About time, and it looks like they’ll do it before Derby as well, putting probably a big question mark against their plans. They best get on with that velodrome now. Quick.

It may possibly be a ‘best of one’ game of squash tonight, before we collapse from the heat. My opponent even wears shorts, so it must be hot. I’m not sure what the temperature threshold is for such exhibitionism but clearly we’ve breached it.

I enjoy a rare win, in what turns out to be a best of three, 2-1. It was 'warming' up in the 4th as well, 13-13, when we had to call a halt due to someone else wanting a stint in the sauna.

He blames the on court temperature or it might have just been the trauma of the shorts but there’s nothing like a heat assisted defeat to bring on a change of sport. Needless to say, as of our next game, it's now the tennis season.

(Thursday 24th May)

Kick Off... Throw Off... Bully Off...

I saw this on the ever unreliable BBC. Beijing has set a rule that public toilets should contain no more than two flies at a time. It is not clear how the flies will be punished if more than two of them enter at the same time.

I tell L to start brushing up on her handball. In this morning’s latest Olympic ticket scramble I add another ticket to our Olympic portfolio and book the entertainment for the Saturday evening when we’re down there for the Pentathlon. Not just any old handball but the bronze medal match no less. I could have got the gold medal match but as Team GB won’t be in either, I thought I’d go for the early evening game so we get to spend our one night in London out on the tiles. This game is a 5pm kick off... throw off... bully off... whatever it is. Must google. At least we’re in the Olympic park this time.

There actually now appears to be plenty of tickets, just not for the highest profile sports. Which makes you think the initial hysteria created by the original ballot system was manufactured and as it turns out totally unnecessary. They could have just balloted half a dozen sports.

I don't know if they intend to reopen their resale system or not but I'm guessing a lot of people will have tickets from that original ballot that they've now improved up on and hence will be leaving an empty seat somewhere if they can't get rid.

My receipt says I’ve been charged £6 for ‘fulfilment’. Wonder if that means they’re chucking in beer and a massage.

I spend the evening out in Derby bragging about my handball tickets to a couple of friends over a few beers. Naturally they think their badminton and volleyball tickets are superior. They may have a point of course, my knowledge of handball is a little sparse, as the moment.

(Wednesday 23rd May)

Enjoy It While It Lasts

The sun is out and consequently the summer dresses are out. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Some may have though that summer was those ten days back in March but no, it’s popped back with a vengeance but presumably not for long. Bizarrely they’re still skiing on the slopes in Scotland.

For some reason I decide a ten mile run would be a nice idea tonight. I quickly realise what a bad idea this is as I do a loop around Pride Park before heading towards home. It’s bloody hot and I have to roll down my girlie long socks, to stop my calves exploding.

Meanwhile L is rather unhelpfully talking about stopping off at the university lake to buy an ice cream on her way home from pump class. Which is weightlifting to music I believe, which I would find distracting but each to their own.

I have a few walks during my 'run' but eventually stagger my way to 15k which isn’t too far off ten miles. I’m past counting. Every so often everyone suffers from ‘horrible run syndrome’. I think this is mine and at least it means that perhaps I've got the horrible one out of the way. They do say that the hard days are what make the easy days easy. We’ll see.

(Tuesday 22nd May)