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Aliveandrunning June 20 2014 Juneathon Day 20

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I didn’t go into central Cambridge for a run today, as planned. However, I did go to Milton Country Park and ran along the river. It was warm but not too warm. Not many people around but I wasn’t lonely. I stumbled but didn’t fall. I perspired freely but didn’t jump in the water to cool down. I used Lorna’s Garmin but have no plans to possess one myself.

I ran 8.1k and took some snaps with my phone at intervals. Tomorrow, it’s Cambridge parkrun. I’m running and volunteering (collecting the direction and information signs placed around the course after all the runners have passed by).

On Sunday, it’s Hatfield Forest 10k, a flat course, I think. Haven’t done it before. Don’t know much about it. Lorna’s doing it as well. I’ll just turn up like a cool, unknown outsider, run it, win it and leave them wide eyed and wiping the grit thrown up by the wide tyres on my Porche 911 as I drive off into darkest Essex. That’s just one scenario. It’s more probable I’ll come half way down the field. That’s good enough.

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The picture on the left shows a branch from the extremely dangerous gooseberry bush, the source of the gooseberries in the glass bowl. My hands were cut to pieces after picking these. I’m surprised the thorns aren’t dripping with blood. I eat them raw. Sour but delicious. In a month or less the dessert varieties will be ready if the birds don’t get them first.

 

 

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Aliveandrunning June 19 2014 Juneathon Day 19

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A little bit of garden I tend. In the picture, it looks  busy and densely planted but it’s full of weeds including the delicate plants with white flowers. No matter. I do like the stipa gigantica, the tall grass seed heads just right of the conifer in the middle background. Couldn’t do much gardening today because I was placed in the unfortunate position of having to destroy  the homes of small spiders. They love our very old creaky cottage and want to live in harmony with us. All they ask is to be able to create a fine network of webs over everything. Why, you can hardly see them unless you’re really determined to wrong foot the little creatures, bless their little arachnid hearts. Anyway,  their finely spun abodes have been swept away and they surely want revenge. They’ll attack, on mass, in the small hours and we’ll just be relegated to a comic headline in the Daily Star “Spider Hordes Eat Family : Police Looking For Motive”.

Day 19 of Juneathon and my run was restricted to 2 miles. Short, sweet and unproblematic. May go running in Cambridge City centre tomorrow. Saturday it’s Cambridge parkrun and Sunday Hatfield Forest 10k. On June 28 there is a trial outing for Cambridge Children’s Parkrun (age 4-14) and the inaugural run is  on July 13. Lorna is one of the race directors and is assisting in setting it up.

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Aliveandrunning June 18 2014 Juneathon Day 18

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Just over half way through Juneathon and I feel I’ve got my energy back. I just ran my default distance 2 miles and I ran it faster and felt stronger than I have done in months. Perhaps I should continue and do a Julyathon and maybe an Augustathon!

So far I’ve run around 70 miles this month plus about 35 miles dog walking. My expectation is that after June, I will have a rest for a few days and then get a PB at parkrun. This is what happened last year. Why not this year!

I enjoyed a large Americano coffee at Costa this morning. They served it in a medium sized potty which I could only raise to my lips by using both of my hands. I drank all  of it. On the way home , I regretted not having an available medium sized potty.

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Aliveandrunning June 14 2014 Juneathon Day 14

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Ms Alive and Running (right) with her Fen Edge Runners Club pals (and mine) at Wimpole Estate parkrun today. Fen Edge Runners take their running seriously but are very friendly and informal. They allow me into their inner circle despite my belonging to a rival club.

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Ms Alive and Running showing good form as she approaches the finish line and Wimpole Hall in all its understated modesty (is this tautology?)

The undulating course and a particularly vicious hill meant that I run it almost 2 minutes slower than the flat and winding Cambridge parkrun. We had rain on the way to Wimpole which was dry on arrival but started after the finish so I didn’t get any photos of their second hand, pre-owned, formerly cherished but now callously discarded book shop. I did venture in, however. After establishing they couldn’t provide a second hand e-book download of my chosen titles, I was forced  to buy the hard copies.

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I resisted explaining that I’m buying these books for a friend and not for myself. The George Orwell essays include the Art of Donald McGill, the saucy seaside postcard artist in which he explores the prevailing humour and assumptions underpinning it. This Penguin copy is old and looks like someone has urinated on it ( one of worst book crimes imaginable, second only to setting it alight). It possesses that lovely old paperback aroma (not faintly like urine) which e-books strangely lack.

In the afternoon, I went to the May Bumps which are a series of rowing races along the Cam. Very enjoyable and interesting. Took loads of pics. Very white, very upper middle class, very traditional. They set up road blocks along the tow path and you were only allowed admission to that section of the path if you could converse in Latin or Ancient Greek, attended a Cambridge college or had an air of smug insouciance. Am I being unfair? Yes!

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Aliveandrunning June 13 2014 Day 13

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An oblique view of Kings College, Cambridge. WARNING : if you visit Cambridge , DO NOT walk on the grass. Kings College groundsmen and groundswomen are licenced to kill anyone who transgresses this rule. Anyone caught dropping litter onto the sward is led away to an inner court yard and placed in the stocks. The gilded youth attending Kings are then invited to pelt the hapless person with stale asparagus tips, rotten foie gras and guinea fowl, uneaten caviar and the like. This is the risky under belly of tourism. Beware (but have a good day).

Another warm day for running. Various chores got in the way so I didn’t pound the mean streets of my village until 5 pm and ran an easy 2 miles.

Tomorrow we are going to Wimpole Estate parkrun. It’s predominately over grass and undulating. It features  a short but steep hill which in the past I have walked up because I find it so exhausting. Wimpole is one of the loveliest courses in a beautiful stately house parkland setting. The cows might also be out in force as well as the runners so there will be an extra frisson of excitement (or terror).

The cafe is excellent and, to top it all, there is a good second hand bookshop staffed by the usual idiosyncratic and helpful National Trust volunteers. This is beginning to sound like a review for SAGA magazine!

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Aliveandrunning June 8 2014 Juneathon Day 8

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Meet my two long legged friends, Ethel and Reginald. As befits literate spiders, they can’t wait to scamper over the book shelves. They have oodles of fun, they tell me. They are voracious readers but tend to confine  themselves to the text on the book spines because, obviously, they can’t turn the pages. Additionally, the font size is large  and it takes time to scan, so progress is slow. They are terrible copycats! Every Saturday at 9 am, they have bookrun while I’m at parkrun so I never get to see them in any great number. So far, no pics on Facebook. I still live in hope. I like spiders running over my books.

 

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Rather warm today. I intended to go for a short run (around 2 miles) because I’m still feeling tired. I ended up doing 1o k. I parked in the country park where we do parkrun, pootled around there for a bit then headed for the river. Plenty of people walking along the riverbank, some runners (avoiding eye contact with me), and cyclists, including trainers on bikes, coaching the rowing eights as they move at speed in the water.

In the above pic, an eight and a narrow boat pass in opposite directions. Next week the May Bumps begin and culminate on Saturday when the successful eights race against each other. The tow path will be full of people spectating and picnicking  on the banks and coaches will be whizzing along the path shouting out instructions to their own crews.

A number of eights wait in staggered positions and, at the firing of a small cannon, set off and attempt to catch up with the boat in front, “bumping them”, that is making contact with their boat or oar. Both eights then pull over. It’s not permitted  to sink another competitor or swipe at them with cutlasses. The crews are mainly Cambridge University colleges with a few affiliated clubs taking part (I think). What do class warriors think of this? Do they move seamlessly among the wicker hampers, jugs of Pyms and bottles of champers cluttering the banks, furiously stroking their chins in wonderment? Or shrug their shoulders? Or kick the picnics into the water? Or, like us, sit on the fence? We’ll enjoy the races but drink fair trade tea, brewed on a portable gas cooking stove, using water drawn straight from the river.

Anyway, no such dilemmas today. Just a lovely run along the river bank. I felt less tired following the run. Only my jaw muscle still ached, a consequence of excessive social intercourse yesterday at parkrun and elsewhere.

 

 

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Aliveandrunning June 7 2014 Juneathon Day 7

 

 

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These landmine looking doughnuts were actually on sale at my local Tesco. I wouldn’t be surprised if people were actually buying them (using their hard earned money obtained by actually working hard}. It’s hard to imagine anything more over refined, food wise. But, then again, munching these may be just the thing to get you in the mood for the Footy to come. Just be careful not to swallow the football and choke yourself to death. Mmmm…..those food dyes look so scrumptious.

Thanks to certain people in Devon sending Cambridgeshire many buckets of rain, the parkrun course got a drenching but, thanks to my intervention by making sacrifices to the gods, the deluge didn’t happen until the last parkrunner came home. We repaired to the park cafe and drank coffee in the actual open air and then the Devon rain came down with a vengeance. Boy, did I do a lot of socialising today. I’m not a natural but I made a sustained effort and actually enjoyed chatting. The reason for this is that the vast majority of runners are very nice people and having now done 181 parkruns (mostly at Cambridge), I know a great many of them.

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Aliveandrunning June 6 Juneathon Day 6

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   Heaven has been restored. I have sourced some giant brussels sprouts which you see dwarfing, if not lording it over, the rest of the food on my plate. Unfortunately the air miles are not insignificant having been grown in Morocco. Never mind, I’ll do a bit of carbon off setting  and plant a couple of trees in the Autumn. I really should be growing brussels myself.

All this Juneathon running is increasing my appetite and I’ve increased my bread consumption which is not a good thing. On the hydration front, my sensible drinking continues to stave off excruciating night cramps. On my two long runs last month, I used a belt and a bottle, cunningly angled, for ease of withdrawal and drank all of it.

Today I ran to an adjacent village’s recreation ground and did 6 x 80m-100m sprints. Total distance around 6k. They have installed some impressive outdoor gym equipment on three locations around the playing field. It looks good quality but the individual pieces can’t be adjusted for resistance. They are all set for minimal resistance or none at all.

Tomorrow is Cambridge parkrun and substantial rain is predicted (in complete contrast to today which has been warm and sunny).

At the end of June, Cambridge junior parkrun is having its trial run before the inaugural run in July. All children between the ages of 4 to 14 will be eligible to run the 2k course in Milton Country Park. It’s a weekly event on Sundays. Lorna is involved with the organisation and will be one of the run directors.

 

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Aliveandrunning May 31 2014

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I asked Rupert to guard my trays of plants while I went to parkrun this morning. I explained that it was of the utmost importance not to take his eyes off them and, since he’s a dog  and not given to argument or debate, he complied absolutely.

Parkrun went reasonably well, although I just missed coming in under 24 minutes. A bloke in front of me crashed to the ground, injuring his knee. It’s risky falling over at the start of the race because 400+ runners are crammed into a relatively narrow path and your line of sight is blocked. Just after this incident my swift friend Kerry dropped his phone and had to walk back into the path of the oncoming runners to retrieve it, another very risky manoeuvre. He survived, as did the phone, and cruised past, leaving me wobbling about in his slipstream, a minute later. Lorna ran with a Couch to 5k running group, giving them support, and coming in at just over 40 minutes These were people in their 40’s and 50’s who had just taken up running and had just completed a short running course to get up to 5k. They were very motivated and felt a real sense of achievement. Fantastic! Very inspiring to everyone.

Tomorrow is the start of Juneathon and I’m kicking off with a half marathon. I’m lucky to be doing it, having done my best to injure myself a week ago. Those industrial paving stones are too heavy to lift, they said. You’ll injure your back, they warned. Don’t worry, I replied, I know my limits. I won’t take any unnecessary risks, believe me. I  lifted them into the car and noted I was on the cusp of getting away with it or injuring myself. A few hours later, my hip ached , two days later my back ached and three days later my foot hurt. I decided to go running with the club during this period and didn’t feel worse but did rest until today’s parkrun when I judged all symptoms had virtually disappeared. To celebrate, in the afternoon, I filled some heavy garden pots and lifted them into position. Will I ever learn? Why do I do such stupid things? Why jeopardise  my ability to run? I vow (tabloid speak) to listen to the wise counsel of my family in future (possibly). At least the dog does what he’s told!

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Aliveandrunning May 28 2014

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We’ve had a lot of rain fall over the past few days. This painting was completed, under cover, as the rain continued to fall and is an accurate depiction of a scene in an adjacent village. They had a convenient arc moored nearby and most of them were able to clamber aboard. Not sure why a substantial number of them are naked. I’m not going to speculate. All I can say is that our village is more conservative. We tend to keep our clothes on and stay indoors when it rains.

An exception to this is running club night although yesterday we all ran with our kit on. It was cold, windy and very wet but still managed to be fun. We ran nearly full pelt for a minute then recovered for a minute. We did six of these, recovered for five minutes then did another six. In terms of distance it wasn’t far but it was demanding. I can’t remember why it benefited us. I just follow orders and run. Drank 500 mls in the car on the way home and another 250 mls  of tonic water (with quinine) later. This regime is successful in warding off the extremely painful cramps I’ve suffered in the past.

Tomorrow, I’ll do a training session with Lorna and friends.

Saturday, it’s Cambridge parkrun.

Sunday, Juneathon Day 1. I’m doing the Flaming June half marathon.