The Impending Apocalypse

L asks if I’m basking in the glory at work. Not really. Most of my colleagues are simply shaking their heads but a couple of folk were impressed.

I’m impressed when I bump into a chap in an Ironman UK 2017 t-shirt in Sainsburys. The only problem was, it was bright yellow. How cruel is that? All that effort for a yellow t-shirt.

This hurricane is causing a few issues, for a start it's gone all yellow outside like the apocalypse has arrived. It’s also trapped all three of our directors in Belfast where they went for a meeting today but now they’re having to stay overnight because all the flights back have been cancelled.

Both dogs are at the vets tonight for their annual MOT and the vet doesn’t even seem surprised to see Doggo again. Both dogs are given a clean bill of health, not entirely spotless in Doggo’s case as he now has plenty of age related ailments but we won’t tell him if the vet doesn’t.

Dog training is off, although apparently its not down to the impending Apocalypse. Which does seem to be clearing now, which is good because we simply haven’t got time for an unscheduled apocalypse. Instead we both go to support Daughter at her running club. L is getting really good at this supporting business. After which we have a swift pint in the pub on the Embankment, which is now a brewpub  in the Brewhouse And Kitchen family.

There is no news on my missing friend, I don’t know if that’s good news or bad.

(Monday 16^th October)

Marathon Man

So... Marathon day. Naturally we would have preferred to have gone by train but despite this being the 21^st Century the country is still unable to run these things before 9am on a Sunday. So we drive there, although we do get a great parking spot right in the centre of Birmingham. From where I get the shuttle bus to the start at the Alexander Stadium while L starts limbering up in readiness for the shops opening.

I have printed her off a map of the route, on which she complains that they haven’t marked Waterstones. They’ve not marked much to be fair but I’m sure she’ll cope.

There are two start times 8.30am and 9.30am. As a Marathon virgin I have been placed in the latter category. It would have nice if everyone could have started together but I guess the current start area simply isn't big enough.

I line up wearing my new barely broken in trainers behind two girls who have labels on their backs saying ‘I’m running for...’ erm ‘Gin’ and ‘Sex’. I suppose it’s a conversation starter but no one’s talking at the moment everyone looks far too worried for chitchat.

This is the rebirth of the Birmingham Marathon. The original, known as the People’s Marathon, started in 1980 which was a year before the inception of the London Marathon. It ran for six years until 1985 and apparently included the M42 (before it was finished). Now it’s back.

So off we go. I like the course which runs us into the city centre before a two lap loop of a large chunk of the usual Half Marathon course. This included Cannon Hill Park, Cadburys and the Edgbaston Cricket Ground. Plenty of people didn’t like the two lap bit but I do like to know where I’m going, as I did second time around. I wouldn’t have wanted to do a third though.

I set off at nine minute mile pace as planned but clearly subconsciously I found this simply too pedestrian as I soon speeded up. Suddenly not four hours but three hours fifty minutes looks briefly on but only briefly.

The atmosphere was good and there were plenty of designated ‘cheering points’ but there were actually plenty of people cheering all the way around at presumably unauthorised points. The route could have perhaps done with a few more bands and there was also no beer stop like at the Great North Run. So they’ll have to sort that omission out.

By half way I have used up all the energy gels I had carried with me and L hands me a few more as I push into the uncharted waters of the second half marathon of the marathon. They are handing gels out at a few points but it would be better if they were available at all the feed stations and a sports drink would be nice too.

I had left a sports bar with L but I don’t take it, which was probably a mistake, as I do start to feel a bit low on energy and start taking jelly babies off the crowd. I discover that it you nibble them slowly you don’t choke on them, which is a bonus. However Haribos and wine gums turn out to be deadly. They are totally inedible and chewy, so I spit them out and go begging for more jelly babies.

Things are going really well until I suffer a minor meltdown at 24 miles. Is this what they call ‘The Wall’? To be honest it’s more of a privet hedge. I start feeling a bit light headed, so I walk for a bit and pour water over my head. This ruins my target time and I slip outside four hours pace as I finish in 4:02.

Bizarrely Erdinger hadn’t sponsored this one and they hand me a bottle of water when I cross the line. How quaint and old fashioned. It was only the one bottle though, which wasn’t enough and I downed mine in one go. I very nearly had to cause a scene in the Sack Of Potatoes pub in order to obtain more fluids.

That’s where I end up by the way, on the grass outside said pub, which is just out of crawling range. Apart from more water, I would have liked a massage but although I can see the sign it might as well be several miles away.

I have informed L where I am and now I await rescue. She says don’t move. That’s easy, I can’t move. She soon found me because she recognised my legs sticking out from under the park bench. I had tried to sit on the bench but hadn’t quite managed it.

I have raided the Goodie Bag but I have to say if this is your typical Marathon Goodie Bag then I’m disappointed. There’s barely anything to eat in it and not much to drink either but I do love the T-shirt.

Apparently I came 1506th out of 5204. Naturally I’m gutted not to make the top 1500 but that’s not too bad for a first effort.

To top it all Derby beat Forest 2-0, with my brother sat in my seat. However, the gloss somewhat goes off the day when I get a text to say that an old school friend of mine, who I still see regularly, has gone missing.

Later I finally get to refuel with a night in the Crafty Crow. 

(Sunday 15^th October)

Feeling More Human

It’s been a while but the boys and I are at a dog show today. Our performance is a bit of a mixed bag. First we have an elimination, then on the next course we were clear right up until we had the last jump down, then we do get a clear round where we came 3^rd and finally we clock up ten faults for two poles down on run four. That was just the morning. Our only run in the afternoon was simply a disaster. So just the one rosette today.

Meanwhile L sneakily skips Pilates and goes for a gym session. After which she says she’s now feels far more human but she doesn’t say if that’s an injured or an uninjured human. Then, with Daughter, she heads off for a free curry provided by Robin Hood Energy and John Carroll Leisure Centre. I enjoy my flask of lukewarm soup.

We stay in tonight, for sort of obvious reasons.

(Saturday 14^th October)

Some Lively Frivolity

I'm on the bus again today and I fear I am now over rested. I’m sure you can over taper. I get no sympathy from L who is rested to the point of pulling her hair out but isn’t, of course, tapering for anything. Well, apart from her planned power shopping on Sunday.

She does sneak in a lunch time swim. I go for lunchtime pints, she goes for lunchtime swims... who's the healthy one here?

Apparently it hurt but it was worth it. I dissuade her from her planned post-work gym session with the promise of some lively frivolity at home to include the anti-God documentary ‘The God Who Wasn't There’ on Youtube and another instalment of the Handmaid's Tale, which we are laboriously working our way through. Quite a combo. 

(Friday 13^th October)

Serious Hydration

The bus was late this morning, very late. So not a good start to the day but at least I'm tapering. An essential part of the tapering process is, of course, hydration. Which may, or may not, be one of the reasons we’re at the Robin Hood Beer Festival later.

I’m not sure what percentage strength of beer is best for hydrating up for a marathon and what particular fast food is best to have with it. So I will probably need to experiment.

L is at home today waiting for our boiler servicing man. The hot water is doing it’s hot-cold-hot thing at the moment. They’re late as well and I’m worried that L will future injure herself repeatedly chucking MD’s ball.

The chap arrives and promptly tries to sell us a new boiler even though the current one isn’t that old and previously they've told us that a new boiler won’t help. Our pipework is old and knackered but no one is up for the job of replacing it.

No two men ever agree on the solution to our water problems but the best one I’ve heard is to leave it as it and for them to keep coming out once a year to clean it out. It is what we are paying them handsomely for.

After that ordeal I think L needs a beer. I meet her in town, that is after the Red Arrow has gone the wrong way and dropped me in the wrong place.

I enjoy the beer festival, L less so.

My selection :-

1. Grafton Sally Pollard's Ginger Concotion 5.0% 1/2

2. Blue Monkey Chimpagne 10.0% 1/6

3. Dancing Duck Imperial Drake 6.5% 1/3

4. Thornbridge Pollards 5.0% 1/2

5. Grafton Caramel Stout 4.8% 1/2

6. Totally Brewed Biscuit Porter 5.0% 1/2

7. Howard Town Dark Peak 6.0% 1/2

8. Thornbridge Cocoa Wonderland 6.8% 1/3

9. Grafton Chocolate Mint Stout 5.0% 1/2

L’s selection :-

1. Grafton P-Butter 4.8% 1/3

2. Blue Monkey Chimpagne 10.0% 1/6

3. Xtreme Chocolate Cherry Stout 5.6% 1/3

4. Thornbridge Sequoia 4.5% 1/3

5. Frownes King Norvak's Saga 5.4% 1/3

6. Thornbridge Sequoia 4.5% 1/3

(Thursday 12^th October)

A Happy Place

L makes a persuasive case for not cycling, the weather is foul. So I go into work on the bus. It is wet but it does stop long enough for my colleague and I to manage a pub lunch.

Leamington Spa has been voted one of the happiest places to live. It’s an interesting choice but not one shared by me. We’ve had numerous trips to visit Son there and clearly happiness is a lack of real pubs and nowhere that sells food on a Sunday. So clearly they have different criteria to me.

The boys and I are dog training tonight while L is going over to Daughter’s for tea. I hope she gets a demonstration of her washing machine, we do have shares in it after all.

(Wednesday 11^th October)

A Girl Who’s Capable

I wonder if we will be in a Thunder Run team this morning?

L assumes not and is a bit gutted really. She says she always like a target and she has nothing. Excuse me... I thought her target was a Nottingham Half/Leicester Half double header and the Nottingham Grand Prix plus I though we were looking for European half marathons to do. That cheered her up a touch.

Later in the day our team captain posts that team entries are full so she has entered L and I as a pair while everyone else are soloists. Then she tenders her resignation. I suspect she’s finally lost it but I’m deliriously excited to be in a pair, it it's true and if I can find a girl who’s capable.

When L translates PMSL it becomes clear that she’s joking and it seems we are in a five again. If that’s not enough laps for me then L has offered to wrestle me in the mud for one of hers. Jolly good, now just to get the rain ordered.

I’m on the bike today and it’s an eventful ride home. First I stop to help a broken down car off the road in Risley and then I find Derby Road blocked with police cars everywhere as they arrest somebody. 

(Tuesday 10^th October)

A Bit Of Quibbling

There’s quite a bit of quibbling going on over our Thunder Run team for next year. We were quite a happy five last year, aside from the biblical weather, but now the squad appears to have ballooned to seven or even eight.

A larger team would be a retrograde step in our eyes, personally I want more laps not less, so we offer to stand down. Then some others offer to stand down which probably makes the team captain want to stand down. Entry day is tomorrow and we’ve no idea what the plan is or even if there is one.

L is out in Derby tonight at Le Bistrot Pierre with the rest of the Hairy Helmet team but not me obviously. I’m off dogging. 

(Monday 9^th October)

Great Eastern Flirt

.

Today I’m in Peterborough for the Great Eastern Run which is a Half Marathon that has nothing to do with those ‘Great’ and ‘Run’ people.

There are dire predictions of parking chaos but as it happens we park practically on the start line, not sure how that happened.

While I make my way to the start line, L makes her way in to the city centre to find a good viewing point. She’s really going to scout out the local Waterstones but if she gives me a cheer as I run past all the better.

With half an eye on next weekend’s ‘big’ one, I was more than happy to jog round this one in another 1:45. When I ran this race before, in 2014, I got round 1:49 but I was seriously strapped up at the time.

Sadly there isn’t a 1:45 pacer today but there is a 1:40 one. So I thought I might as well flirt with him and see what happens.

The route is very flat as was shown by my split times which were incredibly consistent. I also achieved my aim of getting them all under eight minutes per mile. This is always my aim on a half marathon but it is rarely achieved. My slowest today is 7:41. Which all bodes well for a decent time, although by the end I am hanging on to the pacers for grim death.

There are about a dozen of us running with them but when a group of us stop at one of the later drink stations and the pacers don’t, pandemonium ensues. Runners end up colliding with each other as they attempt to get back on pace and in the end a group of us form our own little peloton around 50 metres behind them.

We do gradually battle our way back to them but never quite gain parity with them again and in the last mile I let them go. I’m more than happy when I come home in 1:40:38. L remarks that it was good that I was ‘taking it easy’. I think she’s impressed.

So a good race, although not a very pretty one once you’ve done the city centre but it’s pleasant enough and well organised. I could have done with a different colour t-shirt though, yellow ugh.

I again use my new trainers and all appears well with them but then it was only a half marathon... next week it isn’t.

In the evening we again tour Canning Circus and wind up at the Park Tandoori for a takeaway curry.

(Sunday 8^th October)

Ambivalent To The Occasion

With L still sidelined, MD and I again run parkrun with Daughter. Today we’re up at Brierley Forest Parkrun at Huthwaite, the reason being this is where Doggo’s brother now lives and it means we can get the old men together again.

The runs goes well but it is a bit narrow for running with a dog and after MD’s usual shenanigans at the start it takes us an age to catch up Daughter or perhaps she’s just getting speedier.

I also get to try out my new trainers which seem ok but then it was only 5k.

It’s been about five years since Doggo and his brother met up as they have been living down in Suffolk where we have only visited the once. Both dogs seem a little bit ambivalent to the occasion. Doggo is particularly wary as his brother has also been a tad too boisterous for him in the past and can frankly be a bit of a bully.

Age, however, seems to have mellowed him, either that or he’s no long capable of boisterousness. Both the boys are now sixteen.

(Saturday 7^th October)