What a delightful lady... Welcome, SW, and thanks for your nice fluffy words which I certainly need after standing on a railway platform for too long this morning.
10 miles in 1:42? That puts us in about the same place I'd say. One of my long list of NY resolutions is to try to get a bit quicker. The slightly annoying advice I get from reading about this is: "the way to run faster is to run faster". Ah! So that's the cunning secret.
Deutz champagne is more than reasonable from what I remember about my wine trade days. Mind you, I don't remember an awful lot about my wine trade days, for obvious reasons. It's a long time since I had the opportunity to drink Champagne regularly (in other words, when I didn't have to pay for it). My favourite marque was always Louis Roederer. I haven't drunk it for ages, but their basic NV was always excellent. This year I've taken some advice from my Master of Wine friend Richard (
http://www.winevents.co.uk) who posted something here recently recommending Waitrose champagnes, which also, I think, came out very well in a recent Which? report. So I have that and also some Thames Valley fizz that I found recently at a local farmers market. It's made in, and from grapes grown in, Pangbourne which is a village just a couple of miles up the road. Made by the
methode champenoise though, so I thought it worth trying.
I'm planning on having a pretty (if that's the right word) decadent Christmash-sh-sh though as you might have read, it coincides with the first week of my marathon training, so I'm digging in for an interesting week or two ahead. Though to be honest, despite my fondness for the odd drink or two, I'm seriously thinking about having a few teetotal months leading up to this race. (Just thinking about it, mind.)
Well done on starting running. Isn't it just a great thing to do? Please keep calling by and let us know how you're getting on. (And don't worry about spelling: you'll discover the Edit button eventually).
And finally... thanks again for the endorsement. It's a funny thing. People do quite often tell me that they find this kind of stuff inspiring in some way, but being told that also inspires me to keep it going. So it produces a kind of self-perpetuating momentum that we can all hitch a ride on.
Andy
PS Beware: I'm not usually in such a good mood on a Monday morning. It must be that time of year.
