Great work, Dan -- I've just been catching up on your latest campaign. Several things to respond to:
I feel for you regarding the 'physical and emotional battering' of teaching. M endured it for 17 years, and I have a very good friend (was at school with him) who has been a teacher for nearly 40 years. He lost his hair after about 5. So I know something of the travails -- if only as a horrified spectator. I don't want to sound patronising but I'm genuinely full of admiration for teachers, and especially those who enter the profession in mid-life, driven by conviction and simple decency, rather than the more usual result of post-graduate dithering (though they're to be commended too). Anyway, well done. If RC and this forum had retained its earlier liveliness, I'm sure we'd have learnt more about the experience.
As for the New Forest Marathon/Half, I always had this earmarked back in the ancient days of 2003-2005 (at least that was it was mentioned it in the blog), though it was the half rather than the full that appealed. I always fancied more exotic locations for marathons, mostly, I think, as I needed to get M's buy-in for the several months of training -- and the promise of a long weekend overseas somewhere was more likely to secure her cooperation than anything more local. I may have missed it, but it sounds like you're not running for charity this time? And no outlandish costume? Anyway, more congratulations are in order as you seem to be managing your training as well as ever.
Podcasts? I’m addicted to them, though my choices are more down to earth than yours. I grew to appreciate them, and audiobooks, after I left the UK, when I had to deal with not being able to listen to BBC radio when driving. I started to download my favourite programmes -- regulation bourgeois Radio 4 fare like Start the Week, Moral Maze, Any Questions, Desert Island Discs... and this later grew to include various political pods like the New Statesman, Spectator, Guardian, FT, Times, blah blah. More recently my obsession has extended to the football podcasts, the best of which are Guardian Football Weekly, The Game (Times), Audio Football Club (Telegraph), and the “Totally” family. In fact, I’ll attach a screenshot of the current line-up (once I can remember how to do that).
They’re great audio accompaniments to exercise, as you say. I’m not running these days but I have phases on my rowing machine and Ski-Erg. I’m in one at the moment, trying to reach a couple of targets. One is to reach 1 million metres. Am currently on 824,921 which isn’t as impressive as it sounds since that goes back about 4 years, when I bought the Erg. I’ve had long periods when I’ve not used it at all, but I always come back to it as it’s a great piece of kit. The more usual target people go for is to complete 1 million metres in the rowing season which runs May 1 - April 30. I did almost nothing until July so my seasonal total is only 57,000m -- which means having to do an average of 3,600m a day between now and next April. That’s actually very doable if I could be sure of getting in, say, 5 sessions a week from now until the end of the season -- but I know that I won’t.
Erm, I’m rambling on a bit here. I’m thinking I should restart the blog to allow me to waffle on about such things. Might give me the motivation to get my million before next May, though I have to concede that indoor rowing may not make compelling reading. I suppose I could sprinkle in a few hikes and football matches.
Anyway, I’ve totally hijacked your thread about the marathon. Sorry! Best of luck with it, Dan, and keep us updated.
2019 - will one thread be enough for the whole year?
