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: @

.
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          ~@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@.         
           . . :@@@@@@@@@                

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

Day 19: S is for Sweaty

My Janathon Sweat Levels are reaching epic proportions. Combining commuting (by bike), going the extra-long way to/from work and cycling hard mean I get home from work with a shirt that makes it look like I've been dipped headfirst into a warm vat of gently steaming wee.




Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 17.26km / 52:54 min, Total cals: 484

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 6.07km / 3.77 miles

Total: 107.0km / 66.49 miles

Day 18: R is for Restless

We have a baby. Did I mention that? It kind of takes over your life. I would be tired enough if I was having a huge amount to do at work. I would be extra tired if you add Janathon on to that. And even further tired with the having to fit in blogging.  But just this past week there's been the extra extra tiredness caused by the Restless Lumpy Badger.  At 6 months old, he's starting to work stuff out and really "think" about things other than "Where's the next bit of boob coming from". (Honestly, it'll be another 13 or 14 years before he gets back to that level of simplicity of thought).

This week, we have moved him out of our bedroom and into his own bedroom. He has used this opportunity to deprive us of sleep by cunningly sleeping while we go to bed, and then waking up at the very moment that we turn the lights of to go to sleep ourselves. (Mrs Badger has become convinced that he is afraid of the dark).  He then refuses to go to sleep for an hour or so, despite rubbing his eyes and getting more and more frustrated that he can't go to sleep because, well, he's too tired to go to sleep.  Then he will drop off. For a few minutes. And then it starts again, except this time he's too hungry to go to sleep. Oh and did he mention too tired as well?


I'm sure this is only a temporary phase, and so I have done some scientific research into it, and come up with the following conclusions:

Today I did an "extra" Janathon bike ride to get a night light and assuage Mrs Badger's fears.

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 13.23km / 41:30 min, Total cals: 390

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 6.07km / 3.77 miles

Total: 99.84km / 62.04 miles

Day 17: Q is for Quickie, Quiet

Quickie: Just a quick one today. Absolutely manic at work + the child Badger being unsettled in his new bed + janathon means very little time to blog.

I said at the start of Janathon that cycling to work didn't count for me - but now that I'm doing a lot of cycling at the gym I decided that as long as I cycled hard and/or went a longer route that I could count it. Also I said that it wouldn't count because it was exercise that I would have done anyway. Well today I definitely wouldn't have cycled to work because it was PEEEIING with rain. But I did, so that's definitely an extra.  Wierdly my waterproofs worked perfectly except for my super duper gore-tex trousers leaked in such a way as to get just the back of my knees wet. It was a wierd experience.

Quiet: The child badger has been unsettled the past couple of nights, but tonight he seems to have gone to sleep straight away with no complaints and it is wonderfully quiet, so me & Mrs Badger can watch "The Biggest Loser" with a wry grin. And then maybe ... a special cuddle ... ?

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 10.9km / 34:21 min, Total cals: 321

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 5.29km / 3.28 miles

Total: 93.77km / 58.26 miles

Day 16: P is for Pointless People

This is a bit of a rant. I am known to rant. I have tried to avoid it too much on the blog so far, but I just have to!

I've been doing more gymming this past week (because of my legs) so I've had more time to observe the other denizens of the gym - who I normally refer to as "January Gymmers". Not all of these are Pointless People, but I have three candidates.



Pointless Person 1:
This guy I have seen in the Gym for quite some time (not just this January). However, I have no idea what he actually does because I only ever see him in the changing room. Or just outside the changing room. Or coming in to the changing room.  Maybe "changing" is his idea of exercise. Or maybe his idea of exercise is eating a huge tub of lard because he's certainly way over 20 stone and has been for the past year or so that I've noticed him.  This year of Gym attendance with no noticeable benefit is almost enough to get him the accolade of Pointless Person, but today he tipped the balance. He was hanging around (outside the changing room, natch), wearing those ridiculous "below the bum" jeans. This is a guy who clearly has to go to a "special" clothing store to buy trousers, but goes beyond that to buy even bigger trousers just so that he can hang them off his flabby arse. Pointless!


Pointless Person 2:
I've only seen this girl since the start of this month, but she's been there a few times, mostly at weekends.
She goes on the running machine, but I can't see how fast she has it set on because she drapes her towel over the controls - presumably so she can't see either!  She does about 15 minutes on there and then sometimes does a cross trainer the same way.  The towel is not the pointless offence, however.  The pointless starts with what she's wearing: quite a heavy brown cap, and a zip-up hooded cardigan with the hood up. But it doesn't end there. She spends the entire run holding on to the front of the machine with her hands. This is one of my pet peeves - in fact, if you've got a moment:

What is it with people who go onto an exercise machine and then let the machine do the exercise!. I'm looking at you! person who comes and runs next to me but takes 30 second breaks every 5 minutes by stepping to the sides of the machine and letting it carry on running. I just bet you claim you did all those calories!

- anyway. Pointless-hoodie-cap-girl. If you've got a hat, a cardie and a hood on while you're on the running machine, I don't need to see how fast you are running because YOU AREN'T RUNNING FAST ENOUGH!

Pointless Person 3:
The woman who was on this wierd cross-training- stepping-machine-thing next to me today. It's another one of these new machines they've put in recently.  This one seems to simulate skating or something like that - a bit like a cross trainer but with hand holds that don't move.  This woman wasn't holding onto those, though. She was bent nearly double and holding on to the machine near the controller, with her bum in the air, and she was bouncing up and down on it without making the pedals actually move. WTF is all that about?  If you go on an exercise machine but don't actually make it move, what is the POINT?


There you go. Rant over.  Working week starts tomorrow. I'm quite looking forward to it actually :-)

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 19km / 32 min, Rowing Machine: 2km / 9 min, Total cals: 649

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 9.05km / 5.62 miles

Total: 88.48km / 54.97 miles


Number of times woken during night by crying son: 3

Day 15: O is for Ouch, Our Room Back and Obesity

Ouch: So I've been in the gym today because i'm still trying to recover my legs from their mystery injury. I have my "calorie equivalency" worked out for converting alternative exercises into running and god it's depressing.  I tried a really strange new machine that they've got which looks like a cross trainer but is a bit wierdly different and is crossed with a step machine or something. It was really really hard work but the number of calories it claimed to be burning was *rubbish* - I was going really hard and only managed 120 in 10 minutes which is waaaaay less than I would manage running, at a significantly higher "perceived effort". So I ditched that for the bike, which has similar problems with lack of calories but at least you get to sit down :-)
After all that effort but without getting enough calories on the chart, I decided to sneakily try a 1 mile jog on the treadmill to see how my legs would feel, and see how many calories that racked up.  Well in 10 minutes i did 140 calories and that was with virtually no effort. I could feel the legs start to hurt again though so I stopped and ran them under a very cold shower for 5 minutes in the hope that I could limit any damage. We'll see about that tomorrow.

Our Room Back (maybe?):  The little baby lumpy badger has been evicted! Tonight after I gave him his 8 o'clock feed, instead of putting him into the bouncy cot by our bed, I put him into the Big Cot in his Own Bedroom! (Mrs Badger put it a bit more harshly). This could usher in a new period of additional sleep, or it could go the other way and make it impossible to sleep at all.  One thing's for sure, though - if he stays in there then Mrs Badger will be getting quite a lot more "Special Cuddles" :-)

Obesity: I got Mrs Badger a Wii Fit Plus for christmas (because she asked for it, I am so romantic!) and for various reasons we didn't get around to plugging it in until today.  It tells me that I ought to lose 1 stone 7lb!!!!!  And it says I have a "Balance Age" 11 years older than me! - mind you I did get to "Professional" level on ski jumping so it's not all wrong.
It even has - and here's where we will be putting it to use - an option to register your pets!  If you've been following, I mentioned in a previous post that we have a cat, called Mog, who is now on a diet.  Below are a few more pics of her (pre-diet). I am going to add her to Janathon using the Wii.

So ... difficult ... to ... get ... up.

Attempting to induce some exercise

Hilarious iPhone-based commentary

Result of informing Mog of our diet plans for her.

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 11.1km / 20 min, Cross Trainer: 10 min, Sneaky Run: 1 mile (1.6km) 10:07, Total cals: 527

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 7.63km / 4.74 miles

Total: 79.43km / 49.35 miles

Day 14: N is for Norty Negativeness

A paragliding friend of mine has a saying: "Negative Thoughts: Genital Warts".

Then again, this is a person who willingly jumps off of mountains with only a large-ish duvet preventing him from plummeting to his death.  So you can see why negative thoughts would be bad.

I've reached the point in Janathon where it seems to have been going on forever, but it still has forever to go. I think if I can push through this coming week with exercise every day, then I will have cracked it, but oh lordy it is v hard, what with work being über busy, Lumpy the Badger Baby developing teeth and not sleeping, the injury and all, it just seems there aren't hours in the day enough to exercise and blog and also to read and comment on other blogs.

That's where I've been falling down a bit - I feel terribly guilty, I've lurked on a few blogs but I feel I'm lacking the time to really get in there and comment. So that's my 2nd half of Janathon resolution - try to cut out the Negativity and get round a few other blogs and get posting.

Hands up who is looking forward to the weekend!!

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 9.2km / 28 min / 240 cal

[Run equivalency calculation: ]

Today: 2.76km / 1.71miles

Total: 71.81km / 44.61miles

Day 13: M is for Meg & Mog

When Mrs Badger & I set up home together the first thing she started badgering me about was to get two kittens - two so that they could be friends with each other when we were out.  I tapped my sources and found two options: One friend who had a litter of 7 where we could pick two, or another friend who had a litter of four where two were already taken so we had to take the other two.

I chose the "no choice" option because I knew that if Mrs Badger (Who was only Fiancée Badger at the time) went to see a litter of 7 cute little kittens, we would most likely return home with 7 cute little kittens. So we got the two where there was no choice.

In a fit of massive creativity, we named them Meg & Mog - Meg the black one, Mog the Black & White one.

Mog & Meg when they were little

They were 10 weeks old, and they were tiny. They couldn't retract their claws so I went around looking like a self-harmer for 6 months or so until they learned.

Meg was so black that we also nicknamed her "The Shadow" - it's actually really hard to take photos of her she is so black.

Meg, sitting on Mog

What has happened to Mog, though is that over the four years we've had them, Mog has gone from this:

Mog

To this:

Some kind of Whale Beast

So you can see why we need to partake of Janathon!

Legs are OK today (thank you sooo much for the supportive messages) and I stuck to my guns on the training - so I did a very hard 30 minutes on the gym cycle. I'll do the maths later to work out the calorie-based-miles-equivalent and update this post with my full total.

Janathon Stats:

Today:  Bike 16.38km / 30 min / 350 cal

[Run equivalency calculation: 10km on 5th Jan was 871 calories, so 1km = 87.1cal]

Today: 4.02km / 2.5miles

Total: 69.05km / 42.9miles

Day 12 (Part 2): L is for Last Post

Last Post (With running in it. For a while at least.)

After the Mega Traffic Jam on the A40 in London I was very late home, so I headed to the Gym for a short run on the treadmill rather than a long one.  Having been woken by the Lumpy Badger boy himself at 3am, I wasn't in the first flush of brightness, but once I got going on the running machine things started loosening up nicely and the run itself went really well - 2 miles in 17:18 and not even very out of breath, so cardio fitness is clearly improving.

But.

And it's a big BUT.

I pressed the cool down button and all hell broke loose in my legs.  Removed of the urgency to run, and the adrenaline of exercise, the tightness in both inner-lower-legs (hard to describe it any other way) returned with a vengence. It was like red hot needles shooting up both of my lower inside legs. It feels a lot like what I expect carpal tunnel syndrome to feel like - except in legs rather than wrists.

It was so painful that combined with my great tiredness from the early alarm-call and the 5 hours of driving in traffic that I've done today, that I felt all woozy and dizzy and (I know, it sounds dramatic) almost sick with the sudden pain.

It was all I could do to shower and get dressed, and then I shed a little tear on Mrs Badger who I told in no uncertain terms not to let me run for a while and that I must do some different exercise until this gets better.

Having taken ibuprofen and sat with frozen soup on my inner legs for half an hour, they are feeling better (I don't feel sick any more), but I must stick to my decision.  I know I said I would run every day, but it's clearly a proper injury, and running is making it worse. I'm not a spring chicken any more so I must make sure that I'm not going to do any permanent damage.

Could be worse!

So here's what I'm going to do. I know how many calories per hour I burn on a normal run, so I can calculate how many calories per mile. Then I'm going to do mainly cycling and cross training and I will convert the calories burned into "miles equivalent".  That way I can keep tracking my "mileage" until my legs get better and I can run properly again.

Sorry for the downbeat post, normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

Janathon Stats:

Today:
Distance: 3.22km (2 miles)   Time: 17:18   Avg Pace: 5:22/km  (8:39/mile)

Overall:
Distance: 65.03km (40.41 miles)    Time: 6:00:44  Avg Pace: 5:33/km (8:56/mile)

Day 12 (part 1): L is for late

Was going for a long run this evening but will have to be short because of this:





Gah :(

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:A40, West London

Day 11: K is for 'King Hell, and Mr Kipling

'King Hell: My internets are broken!!  This post will have to be short because I'm having to use my dongle (oooh errr!).  Got home this evening to find that the wonderous mister British Teleconm has dropped my broadband and the webs are all spilling out somewhere, so you'd probably best get browsing everything you can before it all just dribbles away and is lost forever.

Short run again today - trying to get my legs to feel better.  Somewhat better but still a little worried about doing a longer run tomorrow. Will probably do it at the Gym on the 'mill so it's a little bit lower impact.

Also under 'King Hell are these photos of people with the exact same name as CakeOfGoodHope.  I'm pleased to say that NONE of them are actually her.  OR ARE THEY?

'King Huge

'King Ripped

'King Botox

'King Old

'King Fake

'King Hell

Mr Kipling: I love mince pies. I just loooooooove mince pies!

mmmmmmmmm

Janathon Stats:

Today:
Distance: 2.82km (1.75 miles)   Time: 15:15   Avg Pace: 5:25/km  (8:43/mile)

Overall:
Distance: 61.81km (38.41 miles)    Time: 5:43:26  Avg Pace: 5:33/km (8:57/mile)

Day 10: J is for JAMATHON

J is for JAMATHON: At the end of this orgy of exercise known as Janathon we will need a new daily challenge. I'm fairly sure that most Janathon participants would opt for a food-related challenge, so I needed to find a foodstuff that there are many varieties of, and that doesn't contain fat. From a massive list I've narrowed it down to:

JAM

(some jam, yesterday)

I hereby propose that the Month of February 2011 should henceforth host the inaugural:

JAMATHON

Make Jam every day

Blog every day

Whoever makes the most Jam Wins*

Simple, isn't it?**

You can sign up by commenting on this blog. The rules are that you have to either make or eat some Jam every day.  Whoever manages the most Jam (both quantity AND varieties) wins one of our exciting JAMATHON prizes - which may or may not be Jam related - and may or may not be a pot of Jam. OK it is a pot of Jam, but please enter anyway.

Please comment with the following template:

Jamathon Name:
Jamathon Blog Address:
Primary Activity: (e.g. Eating / Making Jam)
Favoured Jam variety:
Preferred Jam Substrate:  (e.g. Toast, crumpet, hot cross bun or just simply bread or even a spoon)

*Maybe. It depends on how you define "Win"
**Yes, it really is that simple. Please don't complicate matters by trying to include Marmite, Bovril, Peanut Butter, Nutella or other inferior "spreads".


If you need any inspiration, please watch this educational video:

The London Jam Festival

---

Wow - 10 days gone, only 21 to go.  Just a short run today but it was outside and it was very windy - I had the very pleasurable experience of a strong tailwind while running uphill. Fantastic!

Janathon Stats:

Today:
Distance: 2.82km (1.75 miles)   Time: 15:00   Avg Pace: 5:20/km  (8:34/mile)

Overall:
Distance: 58.99km (36.66 miles)    Time: 5:28:11  Avg Pace: 5:34/km (8:57/mile)

Day 9 Part 2: i is for iPhone

I invented the iPhone. No really, I did! Honestly!  I just failed at the crucial step of patenting it and mentioning it to Steve Jobs.

As I have explained before I liiiike things with chips in them. And gadgets.  I've had a mobile phone since before they were fashionable. I discovered SMS messaging when nobody else had a phone that could receive the messages and correctly predicted that it was going to be Huuuuuuuuge. (my reasoning was that it was much easier to text someone because you didn't have to get put on the spot by instantly answering any questions about whatever it was - you could think at your leisure or just ignore them - I'm pretty sure that's not far from the truth.)

I've had "smart" phones since about 1998 and have endlessly attempted to do web and email on a succession of hardware, starting with the Psion 5 and an Ericsson SH888 (the first phone to have a built-in wireless modem)

Psion 5

Ericsson SH888

These were linked together using an infra-red wireless(!) connection which meant that you had to carefully position both the Psion and the phone so that they were in line and close, but not too close and not in bright sunshine because that would ruin the link.  This would give me a whole 9.6 kilobits per second!!! (Eat sh*t eight meg broadband!).  I even ran my business using this combination while on a rowing training camp in spain in 1999.

So I've been looking for a usable smartphone for just about as long as everyone. I've tried every combination and particularly I had a series of iPaqs (HP "personal digital assistants") and Windows Mobile phones and they were all, how can I put it, CACK.

In 2004 I got the latest greatest windows mobile phone, and it was getting there - in that I could web browse and do my email, but it had a stylus that you could lose and when you answered a phone call there was a 3 second pause while it stopped what it was doing and decided to try and become a phone again.  I said at the time - "All I want is the screen. I don't need any of these buttons I don't need a keyboard - why can't I just have a phone that you press the screen and then it could draw the buttons on the screen and they could be anything you want - a phone that is ALL SCREEN".

What I wanted. Basically I invented this. Really.

I got one pretty soon after they came out in the UK (just after they dropped the price - I'm not that mental) and I haven't looked back since.

Of course Android is all the rage now, and there's a lot of antagonism between iPhone vs Everyone Else but you simply cannot get away from the fact that iPhone invented the way that "smart" phones should work - and *I* invented the iPhone.

And I blogged on it while running on a treadmill earlier on today - now that's progress.

Janathon Stats:

Today:
Distance: 4.2km (2.61 miles)   Time: 25:00   Avg Pace: 5:57/km  (9:35/mile)

Overall:
Distance: 56.18km (34.91 miles)    Time: 5:13:11  Avg Pace: 5:35/km (8:58/mile)