Lumpy's Diary: Thursday

Last nights i red summink on daddis ipad about sleep deprivation an fort i would giv it a tri.

So iz waited until daddiz turned lites off and woke him up. Then i waited until hez just asleep an woke him ups again.  then i repeeted this until 5 am. then i gave him time off until 7am but silly daddiz couldn't go to sleeps.

iz ok though coz granma was here today and she could put me down and i haz 2 hour naps so iz all energetik when he drags his self home from work.

i fink tonite's torture will be goooood.  Tomorrow mumi comes home - will she make it before i goz to beds? is a race against time!

Lumpy's Diary: Wednesday

Last nite I teezed daddi by waking up a lot of times, but i wosnt tooo nasty coz i went bak to sleepy again very quickly.  I wos very nice to him in the morning though and iz so good we were half an hour early so iz got to play wiv my toys

mornin daddiz

I haz decided that the laydees at nursery are my friends now and I likes to see them when i gets there. I hav been wurkin my charms on them and they all luvs me when i leeves an they all gathers round to tell daddiz about my aventures when he coms to get me.  Today iz impressed them by balancing beanbags on my hed.

This evening granma appeared which was v confuzin and a bit upsettin but she is good at makin me larf and got me to eat a bowl of slop the size of my hed.

I haz a luvly life

Lumpy's Diary: Tuesday

Hiyaz dedicated reeders. iz sorry about spellings but iz only 13.5 months old.

last night i decided daddi had sufferd enuf so i only got him up at 3am and 5am which i fink is quite reasonable.

also decided to reserve all my poos for the nursery laydee which daddi seemd v pleazed about he even danced a little dance this mornins which i laughed at.  Daddi also discovered how to make me larfs wiv special words.  Iz will larf at BAT sed very loud, but not CAT or BAA. Iz findin letters B and T v funny.

Nursery laydee sez iz got meezles today but at least she dint sends me homes. Daddi sed it was MMR again and she seemed ok wiv that. Daddie finks he is doctor or summink? wot he kno?

look at my measles NOT MY WILLY

Now Iz had a luvly bath and gon to bed without any fuss at all. I even et most of mummiz pasta again.

I haz an octopus. Funny squirts!

Iz missin my mummiez tho and sometimes i haz a look around and a grizzles to myself but iz puttin on a brave face for daddies.

Lumpy's Diary: Monday

iz been a very good boy today.

wanted day to start soon so tryed to get daddie up at 3am. And 4am and 5am. then tried to make daddi late for work by sleeping until 7.45 but he was too well prepared! turned out he got up before I woke up.

I got him back though with the most mega pooo EVAR.

i has decided i quite likes nursery peeps. they kno to get straight down to reedin a book as soon as i arrives, and they kno that i like prancing around in the nude like how daddi found me when he came to pik me up (they sed i was hot - they was rite! Phwooar hot!)

Dadi is gettin better at the organizings. he even took me to Mothercare to get a stare gate before makin din dins (which woz luvly cos mummy mades it befoer she left).

luvly sketty. nom nom nom.

Dadi even managed to make me eat slop, have bath and read book before beddy time so I haz decided to go straight to sleep. mite try and wake him up again though.

Lumpy's Diary: Sunday

hiyaz. lumpiz here again. Decided not to torture the oldies last night. stoopid oldies tortured themselves tho and dadi and gramps woke up with "hedakes".

spent the day mostly in chavvy hemel again.  daddi was sposed to be lookin after me but was mostly granma coz daddi and gramps couldn't move until afternoon.

Managed to get them to take me to the park and i could do swings

and nanimalz

and climbing

There woz luvly flowers in the field. stupid daddies told me they taste nasty. wot does he kno?

dadies has taken me home to oxford now. might rethink my decision not to torture him...

Lumpy's Diary: Saturday

hi peeples - iz taken over daddies blog coz mummies haz abandoned me and gon swimming!




Iz decided to make it intrsting fr daddies by gettin MMR fevr. Have been pretendin to b grumpy all day but keep accodentally larfing at daddies & grandma.

Had Huuuuuuuuuge dinner (and 2 Huuuuuuuuuge poos) and wen shoppin in chavvy Hemel for new camera for granma coz silly div TROD on herz an she wants to take pix of me (natch).

Off to bed now. Not decided wethr to tortures them tonight or not. Lets u kno tomoz.

escapin wiv granma

- Posted using BlogPress from daddie's iPhone

Determinator

Hello again - no blogs for ages, norty.

Last Sunday I found myself at 9am in lovely warm sunshine in Pewsey in Wiltshire having decided on the spur of the moment to attempt the Pewsey Terminator. I had also tried to persuade CakeOfGoodHope to come with me, but she decided that it wouldn't be hard core enough for her, and Fatipuff was only just recovering from her bonkers boot camp in wales. So I was there on my own, and it was all because it looked like a nice warm sunny day and it looked like fun. It was advertised as "10 ish" miles and in the past 2 sundays I'd done a half marathon and 15 miles. How hard could it be??

OH MY GOD.

If you'll bear with me, this is the tale of the DETERMINATOR.

Let's make it clear - I had forgotten that the previous several days had included quite a large amount of rain. The Terminator is approximately 90% off-road. That means mud. I forgot there would be mud.

It all started quite nicely. As you can see - it was sunny and quite warm, but maybe you can see the threatening clouds on the horizon.

They had banned MP3 players for "safety reasons" (oooh err!) so I was free to take photos with my iPhone instead of getting tangled in my headphones.





About half a mile later we left the road and started out across the fields, at which point I realised it is not easy to run across muddy fields in road-going trainers.  I immediately scaled back my ambitions to trying to keep on a better-than-10-minute-mile pace.  If you look carefully in the picture you can see the coloured dots on the horizon which are not even the leaders, just all the better cross country runners.




There were some undulating bits and some very muddy bits around gates to fields but I managed to negotiate them without falling over.  Not having MP3 players meant that you could actually chat to people which was nice and sociable. At one point I was overtaken by a chap wearing number "1". When I realised this I raced after him begging to take a photo to pretend that I was leading the race.  He told me that when he received his number in the post he was absolutely gutted!  I told him my runkeeper user id so he could get the photo and I was impressed he remembered after the race!

All was going well so far. 2.5 miles gone, new friends made, realistic targets in mind, sun gone in but still OK.  That was as good as it got.

Turning away from the canal we reached what the organisers called "The SWAMP". Complete with signs saying "Look out for the crocodiles!"

As we ran away from this I got chatting to someone who said she "thought last year that the swamp was closer to the start". Since the course hadn't changed, I took this as a bad sign.  Sure enough shortly after that it started to rain. Not just rain - I think there was hail in there too. The course took a turn through a loooooong undulating gully, where it was virtually impossible to pass people and you had to hop about to avoid the really muddy bits.  Some lovely people had turned out part way along to give us a cheer and were still there even though we were already 40 minutes behind the leaders and it was peeing with rain.

Thank you!

Another couple of miles on the undulating course started to go more earnestly uphill, and then I nearly ran into the back of the person in front. What was going on? We were QUEUING to PULL ourselves out of the gulley on a ROPE of COURSE!

What sort of run needs a ROPE??

This was just the start of what seemed to be a near vertical hill! All possibility of "running" was out of the window, not least because the slippery, muddy rainy conditions meant that every step was treacherous and likely to lead to sliding all the way back down again.

It was steeper than it looks here!

Finally at the top, some marshalls helpfully told me how far ahead the leaders were and "They were running too!". Cheers for that.  The rain really started hammering down so I consoled myself that at least it was raining hard on that helpful marshal.

We were now about 7.5 miles in to the race and I was thinking - well, less than 3 miles to go then.  The course headed off across the top of the ridge.

Then it headed downhill - "Great" I thought. but again OH MY GOD. It was so slippery it was carnage. There was no way to run fast down the hill.  Then they ran us across another field and straight back up the hill again. I was so traumatised and it was raining so hard I didn't get the camera out.  Another "run" down an ankle crunching slidey muddy hill on the verge of falling followed.  Nearly 9.5 miles now, must be the last hill, just round this wooded copse and ... OH MY GOD IS THAT ANOTHER HILL?

Yes it was another hill!

And it only got worse as you got closer

This was just awful. There was so much mud! Every step you took was treacherous. It was now that I was wondering how much of this mud was there when the leaders came through and how much was caused by the fact that I was very very slow and about 700 other people had already been through.

As I ran along the next ridge my GPS watch bleeped to show 10 miles gone.  Another slip-slidey downhill section followed - with signs on it calling it "The Bob Run".  "Who's Bob?" I hilariously quipped. Yes I did say hilarious.

Crossing another field in the valley, I was ready for the final run back to Pewsey but there was a sting in the tail.  We reached a track heading back to the village, but instead of turning right, the evil cackling marshalls turned us left and we, the law abiding Terminees followed a stripey red piece of police tape along and up uP UP UP UP. Once again they had sent us up a hill - this time to circumnavigate the Pewsey White Horse.  I reached the top and had to turn round and record it.

Top of the White Horse. Pewsey in the distance.

At LAST I thought - the last hill, everything is great from here.  Still too slippery to even stand up on the way down this hill, so i did a large section of it on my backside, unable to stop.

Plodding back towards pewsey on the extremely muddy farm track, all thoughts of 10 minute miles gone, 11 miles bleeping on my GPS watch I thought that the torture HAD to END SOON. but no. Not even close.  We reached a proper road. Would they let us run on the road? For 200 yards? Not on your life when there is a perfectly serviceable ditch.  Amazed at what I had just done I turned round and took this photo:

Waist deep slurry ditch, imaginitively titled "The Ditch"

Blackened with mud to halfway up my shorts I stumbled on across another field with my feet numbed to stumps by the icy slurry. Barely able to lift my head to look for the finish line there was another nasty surprise waiting:

Use the bridge? When there's a perfectly serviceable river?

The river was knee deep and freezing cold. Interestingly it wasn't as deep as the slurry ditch, so everybody after the river was blackened with mud between their waist and knees, and clean below that. Very fetching.

With my GPS now approaching 12 miles I found myself running across a school field. All hope of the finish had been dashed. Clearly I was just going to continue on this course like Sysiphus pushing his stone or like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day - Running past the school where we started.

The gods took pity on me.  There was a gap in the fence, we turned a corner and there were the cheering* crowds at the finish!

They weren't cheering. Or paying attention really. At all.

Finally! 3 swamps negotiated, 2 crocodiles avoided, one river, one sewage gully, four hills, one rope, more than 1,400 feet of climb, and nearly TWO MILES longer than they said it was. IT WAS OVER!

Apart from the queue for the showers.

Want to see my run. You can see it ALL in it's full glory here: runkeeper.com

EPILOGUE 1: I ran in to Number 1 as I was leaving.  He remembered my name. And he beat me by 5 minutes.

EPILOGUE 2: As I was walking back to the car I met a man who had no shoes and only one sock. He looked rather dazed.

"Where did you lose your shoes?" I asked him, concerned.

"In the swamp. And my sock too. About 3 miles in.".

"Oh". I sympathised. "Did the Race Marshals bring you back here?"

"No". He explained. "I finished. I'm just thinking about how I can go back and look for them".

This man had run 10 miles, cross country, up 4 hills and through the slurry and rivers, with bare feet apart from one sock. I felt ashamed at my own moaning.

Not a PB but an MB

Well. What was I scared of?

Like I said in my previous post, I would approach the Wokingham Half as a "see what happens". Well what happened turned out to be the second fastest time I've ever run.

My strategy was to try and run just at the point where I was not quite out of breath, then to let myself get past that point and actually out of breath on any hilly bits and then try and use my new-found ability to quickly recover on the subsequent downhill bits.

Maybe it was the adrenaline but I seemed to be going a bit quickly in the early stages. So quickly that I kept trying to slow down but then I'd go through another KM and my time was even faster than the previous one. Eventually I figured that I just shouldn't stress about it and it was probably the gale force following wind.

At 6 miles I was feeling pretty good and I seemed to be overtaking people - despite the fact that I started in the right place in the start queue. I had the feeling that my "base pace" was just pretty good, so I relaxed and just kept running.

At 8 miles last year was where the rot set in. (last year I went out really really fast and blew up at about 8 miles and managed to stagger home from there. It was fast overall, but it wasn't pretty and I was so traumatised afterwards that I didn't run for another month or so). This time ... I just kept on going. I was running into the gale force wind at this point, but my pace only slowed by the amount that I would expect because of the wind, not the tiredness.

At 9, 10 and 11 miles I even felt able to try and take a photo for the Runkeeper followers - despite the fact that this meant hobbling hunchback while doing so because of interference between the iphone headphones and the ron hill bright yellow running jacket tied round my waist.

At 12 miles it was raining so hard I didn't want to get the phone out to take a picture, but by that point (well, with 3km to go precisely) I had realised that it was possible to get sub-1.50, and I'd started "going for it" a bit - but not too much, to keep in with my philosophy of not trying too hard on this one.

I was even able to explain to Mrs Badger + Fatipuff, who were thoughtfully placed at the 13 mile marker, that I "Might just get under 1:50" as I huffed past. "SHUT UP and GOOOOO!!!" screamed Mrs Badger lovingly.

And there you have it. I overtook 3 more people in the sprint for the line. Stopped the clock on my various watches and felt very proud of myself. Then we went for a pub lunch and stuffed ourselves stupid! ("You didn't have far to go on that score" was CakeOfGoodHope's comment). Then I was even more smug when I got home and checked the results and my official "chip time" (Bib number 1566, came 1134th) was 30 seconds faster than I'd timed it myself (not sure what's going on there, but I'm NOT complaining) which makes it the second fastest time I've EVER run. YAY! Go BADGER! 1hr 49min 17seconds!!!!!

Thanks for the support, and the texts (even during the race!).

** Oh, and MB? Moral Best! Because I didn't try so hard.

Bracing myself for the inevitable

Tomorrow at 10am, me & CakeOfGoodHope shall be "performing" in the Wokingham half marathon.  You can watch me LIVE by going to runkeeper.com. This is the venue where last year I got my PB of 1hr 47 minutes (ish) so the pressure is on.

I'm not going to overtly try for a PB though because I'm hoping this is just the first of many events this spring, so I just want to find out what sort of a state I'm in after Janathon.  Sadly it looks like the weather is not going to be all that wonderful with strong winds and rain forecast. I can probably cope with the rain but the last 4 miles or so will be directly into a strong headwind, so that'll be fun!

If you are watching, please leave me a comment on here to give me some encouragement - I'll have my iphone with me and I'll try and take some photos as I go around to make it a kind of "live training blog" like a step up from the one I did in the gym.

Wish us luck (both tomorrow and tonight as I try and get some sleep despite the best efforts of the Lumpy).

Getting Scared

Weirdly I'm getting scared.

It's Wokingham Half Marathon on Sunday. The first big test of the year. Last year I got a PB so I'm actually feeling a little bit scared about what will happen.

Oh well - it will all be over by midday. The start is at 10 and given that i've managed sub 2 hours before on MUCH less training I should be ok. I suppose the fact that I'm reasonably fit after Janathon is why I'm scared. I *might* be fit enough for a PB, but I won't find out until probably too late.

Best thing will probably be to just take it fairly steadily and then enter another HM soon, once I know my performance level. Maybe Berkhamsted again?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A new dawn

Well I have to do a post today, just to prove that I can carry on if I want to.

Not much to rant about today - all I did was cycle the long way home again. My god, I cycled nearly 200km in January, that seems ridiculous.  The real reason I cycled the long way home today though is that it has been weeks since I cycled up the c***ing hill, because the "long way round" route comes in at the top of the hill not the bottom. So I cycled a whole 4 extra km just to avoid the hill at the end. Logically I've actually done more hill, but it didn't seem so scary.

I'm freeeeeeeee from silly letter titles to blogs too. Which means I won't do one every day, I'll only do it when I've got something interesting to say. BUT here is where you can help.  If you are reading this blog, and enjoying it - WRITE ME A COMMENT - even if it's just "Ha ha - LOLZ" or "stop ranting".

I'm really not kidding. The last couple of days I've found out some people I never realised were reading it. Some even claimed to be enjoying it (mental patients, probably), but I only thought about 3 people were reading it, and one of those probably had to for Janathon Judging reasons.  One was Mrs Badger and the other one I think is just lost or something.

So if you are lying there at night trying to listen through the wall to see if our baby is crying more than your baby and reading this on your Blackberry, then WRITE ME A COMMENT - you KNOW who you ARE Mrs Lion Tamer!!

And to all those Janathoner's who made it through, and posted and exercised every day - My GOD you've got my respect. And those who know me well know that is given out extremely sparingly.

All you Janathoners are GREAT!

Day 31: .

Full Stop.  NOT.

Janathon has reached it's end.

When I started, it seemed that 31 days of exercising every day was an almost impossible dream. Then it got worse with my injuries caused by overdoing it in the first few days - but it was the support of random people who I had never met who were writing comments on my blog that kept me going, and thanks to them I discovered a whole new way of getting in the exercise that I think has actually got me fitter than just running every day would have done.

The thing I've been most surprised by is that I've been able to blog every day. I'm glad I chose to do A-Z (plus punctuation) because I think otherwise I may have descended into complete boringness!  Slightly concerning however is that the most popular posts seem to have been when i go off on a massive rant about annoying people!  So it seems that if I carry on with this blog I may not post every day, I may have to save it up until the two or three times a week that I want a big rant. I may have to rename it MrRantyBadger.

I've been very very impressed by the lovely people who's blogs I've been reading throughout the month - and I shall continue to follow them. In some ways they've become a bit of extended family - particularly lottabottle, marathonmiss, iron mike, travelling hopefully and too many more to simply list. Your support and comments have inspired me and surprised me that there are other people out there who seem to care!

Not Really.

I shall try to continue posting, I will definitely continue exercising - possibly I won't do either every single day - but one or the other most days should do me for now.  In the meantime please keep supporting me in the run-up to the half marathon on 13th Feb!!!!!!

After yesterdays "emissions" the good news is that I have recovered sufficiently to finish Janathon with a 2 mile run!  Wierdly, while running I felt amazing and I could have easily done 5km despite the fact that I've probably eaten less calories than that over the last 2 days. But Mrs Badger was adamant that I shouldn't do more than 20 minutes.  Also satisfying was that after a 5 minute warm down, my heart rate was 103 - a month ago it would have been 130. Awesome!

See you tomorrow.

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Run 3.2km / 2 miles / 18:35 min

Janathon Total: 189.4km / 117.7 miles

Day 30: : -

Colon Dash.

What doctors would call D & V.

Last night we had a lovely meal round at Fattipuffs, and then at 4am this morning the bottom fell out of my world.  Now I'm not saying that Fattipuff's food was at fault - I would never accuse her of that because everyone had the same. I *might* accuse her of sabotage though! (only kidding).

Not sure what has caused it but basically I have expelled every single nutrient out of my body and have spent all day in bed moaning gently while Mrs Badger administers hot towels, looks after every single need of the little Lumpy Badger and is generally saintly while I am generally a burden.

Worst of all - uppermost in my mind wasn't the hassle I was causing her - it was how the hell was I going to get some Janathon training in.  There was no way on earth I was going to do 15km as planned - I can't even run, so eventually at 6pm I thought WHAT WOULD RON DO? I dragged myself out of bed and went out for a 1 mile walk.  In the circumstances the effort level was pretty similar.

So it's disappointing because I had a real doozy of a weekend planned with a total of 35km of running and I've only done 10 yesterday and a 1 mile walk today.

Last night was great - although Fattipuff has stolen my thunder by already posting my planned picture of Me, her & CakeofGoodHope in our Janathon-themed T-shirts.

The Oxford Janathon Urban Family

CakeOfGoodHope. With Cake. I hope.

On the plus side - I've spent a lot of the day in bed browsing the web on my ipad and viewing every single comic on theoatmeal.com - highly recommended!

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Walk 1.61km / 1 mile / 18:09 min, Total cals: 96

Total: 186.2km / 115.7 miles

Day 29: %

We are now 93.55% of the way through Janathon.

Over the course of Janathon so far:
I have done about 68% of the running that i expected to do.
I have done about 300% of the cycling that i hoped to do.
After a 5 minute warm-down after a 10km run, my heart rate is 17% lower than it was.
Amazingly I am 38% LESS tolerant of idiots in the gym than before**.
I weigh 5% less than I did in December
I'm getting approximately 70% of the sleep required for continued sanity. Worse than this, Mrs Badger is getting approximately 40% of the sleep required for continued sanity.

All good stats. Today I did 10km, tomorrow I'm going to do a 15km run, and if I'm still OK on Monday, I'll do another 10km just to go bonkers for the Janathon finale!

**OK so I've got to rant. YET AGAIN in the gym I was surrounded by w**kers.  About 5 minutes into my 10km, I was the only person running on a machine in a row of 10 machines. A tw@ guy gets on the machine right next to me (bad gym etiquette I think), and then proceeds to run for - I kid you not - 30 WHOLE SECONDS - before hitting the cooldown button and getting off and doing some cross trainer or something.  THEN, scarcely had my incredulity died down but ANOTHER w**ker got on the SAME machine right next to me (with ALL the other machines free - am I GORGEOUS or something?) . So he cranks the slope up to the maximum that the machine can go and spends the next 13 minutes and 23 seconds (I counted every second) HOLDING ON TO THE BAR while walking "uphill" for a massive total of 1.5km.  I just wanted to turn and punch him with every step.  WHY do the exercise if you can't do it without hanging off the bar? You TOOL. I was so distracted by him that I didn't notice much else for a while. Picture the scene. With every other step, I'm looking round at his "technique" and huffing to myself, and after a few minutes start rolling my eyes and looking around the room. Eventually I look to my right and do a double take so massive I nearly stepped off the side of the machine and did a comedy fall. A woman has got on the OTHER machine next to me wearing cerise pink lycra, and she's DOING THE SAME THING. Her ONLY TWO redeeming features were that she only did 8 minutes and she had a large and reasonably attractive chest.  The attractiveness of the chest wasn't enough to cancel out the w**kerish nature of her exercising though.

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Run 10km / 57:57 min, Total cals: 830

Total: 184.59km / 114.70 miles

Day 28: @

.
             .@@@@@@@@@@@@              
          ?@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@           
        @@@@@@+.  .. .   O@@@@@.        
      .@@@@=                @@@@        
      @@@@.     +@@@.       . @@@       
     @@@     D@@@@@@@@.@@@@7   @@@.     
    @@@?   .@@@@@=  @@@@@@@    @@@.     
   I@@@    @@@@~     ,@@@@@     @@@     
   @@@    @@@@?       @@@@.     @@@     
   @@@.  ,@@@@       .@@@@     @@@7     
   @@@   @@@@@       .@@@@    .@@@      
   @@@   @@@@@       @@@@7    @@@@      
   @@@   @@@@@      @@@@@.   @@@@       
   @@@   .@@@@?.   @@@@@@  @@@@@.       
   .@@@. .?@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@.         
    @@@@    @@@@@@@ .@@@@@@@.           
     @@@@.      .    ..  .    .@@@@     
      @@@@@+                 @@@@@      
        @@@@@@@@.       =@@@@@@@        
          ~@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@.         
           . . :@@@@@@@@@                

Gosh this is getting difficult. to me the '@' sign stands for the interwebs that are taking over our lives. In some ways that is a good thing - we can find out stuff immediately without going to a library, but that means we don't need to remember anything any more, and I'm pretty sure that means that soon we won't even be able to remember stuff without our online perma-connected gadget phones.

I have long had a theory about whether gadgets or technology are going to be successful - I call it Mr Badger's Law of Technology

The law goes in the form of a question to be answered:

Does this new technology allow the user to be more lazy and/or less organized?

If the answer is neither, then the technology has very little chance of success.
If the answer is either one or the other, then the technology has an outside chance of being successful, but is by no means guaranteed.
If the answer is both there is a good chance that the technology will

The Mobile Phone is my favourite example - In the 'olden days' we used to arrange to meet someone at a certain time and at a certain place. Now we call each other when we're on the way and you see people talking on the phone until they can actually see each other.  Lazy and disorganized!

Smartphones with email and instant web access are just the next step of that. I don't have to be organized any more because I can always find out the answer online. I can check my email and I can even record my workouts via gps and upload them to a website at the press of a single virtual button.

So what's next? My favourite prediction is that someday soon we will have voice recognition on phones that will allow you to dictate a text message to someone. Sounds stupid but it passes Mr Badger's Law.

Janathon Stats!

Today!  Bike Total: 17.34km (473 cals) 50:26

[Run equivalency calculation!]

Today! 7.03km / 4.37 miles

Total! 174.59km / 108.48 miles !

Day 27: !

GOSH!!!!!!!!!!!

I've done 27 days in a row and run out of letters! People asked me at the start what I would do when I get to the end of the alphabet - it seemed so far away in the future that I wouldn't need to worry about it and if I got that far I would be amazed!

The only people reading this blog are Janathoners - they are the only ones sad enough! So WELL DONE YOU TOO for making it this far! We've only got FOUR MORE DAYS TO GO!

I feel like I've really been on a journey! By my 'run equivalency' calculation today I passed 100 miles of running in January! My fitness is improving and I'm inspired to keep going into Februthon! But don't forget about JAMATHON too! Although today I found that there is a REAL jamathon at www.jamathon.com which is entirely unrelated to mine!

Toodle Pip! See you tomorrow!

Janathon Stats!

Today!  Bike Total: 19.66km (534 cals) 1:05:55


[Run equivalency calculation!]

Today! 7.73km / 4.80 miles

Total! 167.56km / 104.11 miles !

Day 26: ZZZZZzzzzzzzz.......

I'm knackered.

As Mrs B will tell you the tiny badger has decided to mark the occasion of moving into "Big Cot / Own Room" by producing his first tooth.  This has involved about a week now of extremely sleepless nights. Added to this I decided to go for a run at the gym early this morning with the reward of being "allowed" to drive to work instead of cycling the long way round.

The run itself proved that this Janathon lark has really improved my cardio fitness - I did 12km at an average pace a little bit better than 10.3km/h and I didn't even get out of breath!  The only problem was that the fecking running machine decides that despite entering your target distance, you're not allowed to run for more than 60 minutes - and if it gets to 60 it just shuts down.  Luckily I'd had this happen before (some machines do it, some don't) and I knew exactly how much extra distance I had left so I could program it back in and restart.  Anyway, the really silly thing is that you can program the machine to do any target distance of anything up to 25km. In an hour.  Do they really think that someone is going to break the half marathon world record on a running machine in their stinky Gym????

The other thing I forgot was about chafage.  I forgot to vaseline my "bits" this morning so I'm currently walking like John Wayne. Still, this is better than the first time I ever did a half marathon when I'd never even heard of Vaseline, and within only a couple of miles I'd chafed so much that I had blood trickling down the insides of my legs for the whole of the rest of the way round. I had red bits all down my socks.  I couldn't walk straight for a week!

But even with all these problems, the run itself was amazing. It's so brilliant to see the general fitness improvement, and my legs are not hurting at all any more.  I'm back on track for the Wokingham Half marathon - I'm going to do 15km on Sunday, and 18km the following Sunday and then a week of "winding down" before the Half - I'm really looking forward to it! Thank you Janathon.

Even though I'm feeling fitter, though, I still burned nearly a thousand calories on that run, I haven't had a proper night's sleep for a week, I got up early and ... Z ... ZZ ... ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz

Why do you want to sleep, Daddy?

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Run 12km / 1:09:31 min, Total cals: 989

Total: 159.83km / 99.31 miles

Day 25: Y is for Yes

I do burble in my head when I'm exercising. Today I was cycling along (quite hard - I got a record time!) and thinking about 'Y' and I got all romantic and thought of the time when Mrs Badger became Fiancee Badger instead of just Girlfriend Badger.

We were in the Lake District, in March 2006, and I had decided at Christmas that I was going to pop the question. I nearly did it at New Year, but there was a certain amount of red-wine-sick-unpleasantness in a hotel room in Brussels so the moment didn't seem quite right...

So I hatched a plan to get her to the top of a nice big mountain where she couldn't run away and do the deed there. I selected Helvellyn, and after taking in a huuuuuge breakfast in a cafe in Windermere we set out from the foot of the mountain in bright sunshine.

Striding Edge to the Summit

Part way up, we reached the snow line, but it was still warm so we pushed on.  Then cloud came over so we put on our jackets.  Then we reached the base of the ridge known as "Striding Edge". This is a ridge with a sheer drop of 600ft on both sides. And it was covered in snow. Most of the other people out were wearing crampons and carrying ice axes, but undeterred I pushed on.  Mrs B hid her fear gamely until about halfway along the ridge where we stopped to watch a big yellow rescue helicopter come and rescue someone who had fallen all the way to the bottom.  Then she started to lose her sense of humour. It took a lot of persuasion but I coaxed her across and then up the steep snow field to the summit with the threat of a 200m slide straight into a lake if we lost our footing.  A few metres below the summit, the cloud came down and we were enveloped in mist - everything was white, and the wind was rising.  We found a little shelter of two stone walls and I was revving up to do it right there when a party of about 5 other people came and huddled in with us so I was thwarted.  Eventually after eating our provisions we headed off to find the actual summit, and there at the summit point I grabbed her and blurted it out.

Her reaction wasn't what I'd hoped. She started getting narky at me for grabbing her!  Obviously in the howling wind she hadn't heard me, so I ended up shouting "WILL YOU MARRY ME?" into her ear.

I don't think she could have looked more incredulous if I had suddenly produced a lobster from my trousers and asked her to teach it to speak Spanish.

I asked her again (well, shouted).

"YES OF COURSE" she shouted back "BUT YOU DIDN'T GET ON YOUR KNEES".

I got on my knees in the snow and shouted again.

"YES" she said, and dragged me to my feet. "NOW GET ME OFF THIS BLOODY MOUNTAIN".


Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 13.24km / 36:04 min, Total cals: 380

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 5.96km / 3.71 miles

Total: 147.83km / 91.85 miles

Day 24: X is for Xylophone (and other things)

I've been pondering what to do for the "X" day for quite some time. A lot of my running or training time has been taken up with the thought.  First of all I wondered whether I should contrast Mrs Badger with Xanthippe (wife of Socrates who was famed for her bad temper), or to consider the xenophobia of Xerxes the first who invaded Greece in 490BC. I couldn't decide, so I got hold of Mrs B's "Oxford Dictionary of English", turned to page 2,052 and put it through the Xerox machine.  I used my X-acto knife to cut out the words that I found there and momentarily contemplated plotting them on the x-axis of a graph before an idea hit me in the head like a large xenolith.  There are Xs all around me on every run that I do - in the trees where ground water is transported by the xylem into the leaves where every autumn it is transformed into beautiful colours by the production of xanthophyll. And if you distill it, you get xylene as a fuel or xylitol as an artificial sweetener. You don't need to go to Xingtai in China, or canoe down the Xingu river in South America to see that!

But then I thought that would all be a waste of XHTML and decided to write about Xylophones.

Xylophones - Aren't they great? I really like them.


Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 17.2km / 47:45 min, Total cals: 497

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 7.31km / 4.54 miles

Total: 141.86km / 88.15 miles

Day 23: W is for W***er

The conversation went like this:

Mr B: Hmmm... Tomorrow is W. What starts with W... ?

Mrs B (instantly): Wanker?

Mr B: Ok well now I can't think of anything else. You've got that stuck in my head. I'll have to find one to write about.

Luckily, there was a Wanker at the gym today.

I had decided to do a 10km run on the running machine, and I was part way through when this guy got on the machine one over from mine and started really pounding along.  The displays were angled so that I couldn't see how fast he was doing but he was hitting the deck really hard every step and I was worried that he might be Better Than Me.  This worry increased as time went on and he didn't stop - usually people in the gym do about 5 minutes, so my hour long run is enough to see off almost anyone.  My concern turned to irritation when he started making moaning noises loud enough to get past my iPod headphones, and to outright annoyance when he started actually shouting at himself. "Come ON!!!" he would shout every couple of minutes. I could't see how fast he was going so I took a leaf out of Fatipuff's book and put on my best "Game Face" and just hoped he would stop before I did.  I was really concerned that this git would run faster and/or further than me.

Wierdly he hit his cool-down just a few seconds after mine. Again I had to keep my cool and do the full warm down, and record my stats (10km, 57:52 for an average speed of just under 10.5km/h), and finally I was able to nonchalantly wander past the back of his machine and I had a wave of relief when I surreptitiously read his stats: 5km in 35:00 minutes. Less than 10km/h. And only 5k.  Thank God! He wasn't Better Than Me, he was just a common or garden Wanker.

This status was confirmed in the changing room mere minutes later where I incredulously observed him taking his sweaty kit off and putting his normal clothes back on without a shower in the intervening period. Eeeuuuuurrrrrrggggghhhhhh.

Wellness
So I did 10k today - and my legs feel GREAT! - I did proper stretches before and after and they feel better today than after yesterday's 5km. I'm really excited about the rest of Janathon now.

Today:  Run 10km / 6.21 miles, Time: 57:52, Pace 5:57 per km


Total: 134.56km / 83.61 miles

Day 22: V is for Victory

Victory
It's been 9 days since I started cycling instead of running to save my legs and I decided that I should do a proper run to see if I am cured. So I did 5km in the gym and I'm not cured exactly, but it was fine and didn't hurt afterwards, so I'm declaring VICTORY over the injury.  I think I'll still mix the cycling with the running, to make sure it doesn't come back, but I really need to do some long runs because I'm entered for wokingham half marathon on 13th Feb and I need to get that distance up!

I could go on and on and on about the concept of Victory - it is very close to my heart (see "C is for Competitiveness") I used  to be obsessive about it, now I just like it.  A lot. A really really lot.

I don't think I'm going to win Janathon though. Which is fine. Kind of. Well, not really but I will grit my teeth and pretend not to mind :-)


Video
Tonight, the tiny Badger pup has been put to bed, and me & mrs badger will be watching our favourite Video: Withnail & I - because we were reminded of it on the Tourette's day.  We are also going to do a cut-down version of the Withnail Drinking Game. Instead of drinking exactly  what they drink on screen, we shall take a sip of wine, beer/cider or a spirit (with a mixer of course) whenever they drink the same kind of drink on screen.  Hopefully this will not render us incapable of seeing to the tiny Badger's needs later on. I apologise in advance if I blog later though !!

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Run (YAY!!) 5km / 3.11 miles min, Time: 29:44, Pace 5:57 per km

Total: 124.56km / 77.4 miles

Day 21: U is for Unthinkingness, Underwater Shenanigans

Oh dear I can feel another rant coming.

As you know, I've been cycling "the long way home" to get my Janathon exercise in.  About 60% of that is round the Oxford ring-road, which sounds dangerous, but there is a very wide, well-appointed, and hardly used bike track all the way.  It gives me quite a long time to think, because there's nobody else around and it's completely dark.  Part of the time is of course filled with Tourettes, a large percentage of the rest is filled with the Swimmy Fishy Song, but the rest I spend in thought decrying all the UNTHINKINGNESS we have in this world.

What I mean by "Unthinking" is where someone is presented with a situation, thinks about it for, oooh about a nanosecond, picks an answer and says "that'll do - it doesn't affect me anyway". Unthinking means not looking at it from other people's point of view.

Like the one that got me this evening. There are excellent cycle paths all around the Oxford ring road.  Someone probably put them there to increase their cycle lane quota.  The trouble is, cyclists hardly ever want to cycle around ring roads. That's what cars do.  Other cycle lanes in Oxford go wiggling around all over the place to get out of the way of the cars, and again nobody uses them. I just KNOW that the "cycle lane Tsar" or whatever he/she is called in Oxford actually drives a car around town.  They reason thusly: - "Of course, cyclists want to stay out of the way of the traffic, and they are really slow, so they probably aren't in a hurry so it doesn't matter if it's a bit further. Let's route this cycle lane around the back of this industrial estate because there's room to put some new paths there".

AAAAARRRRGGGHHHHHHH.  Nobody uses them because if they ACTUALLY THOUGHT ABOUT IT for a NANOSECOND from a cyclist's point of view they would realise:

• Cycles are slow, so cyclists are probable in EVEN MORE OF A HURRY than cars
• Cycles are people powered, so distance REALLY MATTERS in a much more fundamental way than it does with cars
• Cyclists don't want to get away from the cars, THEY WANT THE CARS TO GO AWAY
• Cars are quite happy to go a bit further (quite a lot further sometimes) if it is FASTER (e.g. M25)
• If you put cycle lanes in SH*T places, CYCLISTS WILL NOT USE THEM
• If you think that painting a few dotted lines near the left hand kerb and then just stopping when it get's inconvenient (like there's a parked car in the way or something) counts, you are NOT THINKING IT THROUGH PROPERLY
• If you want people to get out of their cars and get on their bikes then it might be a good idea to MAKE IT EASIER AND LESS DANGEROUS TO CYCLE TO PLACES THAN TO DRIVE

That's my rant for the day.

Underwater Shenanigans

To cheer you up after that, I'd like to share a picture of my Son having his daily bath this evening. Aaaaah. Hmmmm. What's he doing under the water there ... like father like son? Or maybe it's just me.

Hello Daddy

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 14.83km / 45:20 min, Total cals: 384

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 6.55km / 4.07 miles

Total: 119.56km / 74.29 miles

Day 20: T is for Tourettes. F**k S**t C*** A***

I think I may suffer from "Runner's Tourettes".  Any exercise that I'm doing, running or cycling or whatever, I find myself talking to myself, often in quite a sweary way.  Also, I tend to get tunes stuck in my head. Recently it's been the theme from Withnail & I which the BBC have been using for an advert.
Things on the journey will then kick me off into talking or swearing under my breath - if I'm cycling i'll swear at cars if they stray into the cycle lane or particularly if they are slowing me down.

But the last couple of days I've had something even more sinister and insidious going through my head - particularly on these "long-way-round" cycles from work, where most of the cycle is very dark and completely on my own so I can't swear at anyone.  It is the song from a fishy toy that the baby Lumpy Badger was given for christmas that he has in the bath. And it goes like this:




I CAN'T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD!!!!

F*** SH** C*** A***!!


Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 13.61km / 39:29 min, Total cals: 384

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 6.01km / 3.73 miles

Total: 113.01km / 70.22 miles