.zg_div {margin:0px 5px 5px 0px; width:117px;} .zg_div_inner { color:#666666; text-align:left; font-family:arial, helvetica; font-size:10px;} .zg_div a, .zg_div a:hover, .zg_div a:visited {color:#3993ff; background:inherit !important; text-decoration:none !important;} zg_insert_badge = function() { var zg_bg_color = 'ffffff'; var zgi_url = 'http://www.flickr.com/apps/badge/badge_iframe.gne?zg_bg_color='+zg_bg_color+'&zg_person_id=7713487%40N04&zg_set_id=72157600228731297&zg_context=in%2Fset-72157600228731297%2F'; document.write(''); if (document.getElementById) document.write(' What is this?'); } zg_toggleWhat = function() { document.getElementById('zg_whatdiv').style.display = (document.getElementById('zg_whatdiv').style.display != 'none') ? 'none' : 'block'; document.getElementById('zg_whatlink').style.display = (document.getElementById('zg_whatdiv').style.display != 'none') ? 'none' : 'block'; return false; } www.flickr.com zg_insert_badge(); This is a Flickr badge showing photos in a set called Local – Round the Lake. Make your own badge here. if (document.getElementById) document.getElementById('zg_whatdiv').style.display = 'none'; Out at seven this morning for a 6-miler. Longer and further than intended, but sometimes the occasion builds … …
Blog Posts
Apart from global celebrity, there aren’t too many benefits that come with the maintenance of this website. The friendships I’ve made and the encouragement harvested from them stand out as the biggest plus points. However, the occasional freebie doesn’t go amiss. I’ve had a few offers and limp inducements over the years but the only two useful ones that come to mind are 1) a free subscription to the excellent WeightLossResources which has helped me shed some surplus lard, and 2) a wireless headset that recently came my way. I wrote a while ago that I usually go through three distinct phases when I get a new gadget. Phase 1: Damn, it doesn’t bloody work. Phase 2: Oh hang on, … …
Dress disposably… This invaluable piece of advice appeared while I was searching for information on the Boston Marathon. I call it “searching” but you don’t have to look too hard. Boston is massive. We don’t normally associate running races with tradition, but Boston has it oozing from every orifice. Much more of this over the next few months, I’m afraid. I mentioned a few weeks ago (see April 9), a strange experience I had, waking in the middle of the night to hear a voice coming through the radio, telling me what my running plans were to be for the coming year. Someone mailed me yesterday, asking me what that was all about. First, this is what I heard: Listen… …
Another race, another deluge. Was there a time when I ran races in dry weather? I fancy there must have been, but it seems like a very long time ago now. I have distant recollections of finishing a race feeling rather warm. I can recall a towel being used to wipe sweat, and not rain, from my face. Like last week at Shinfield, the Woodley 10K is a cordial, community event. And like last week, it was almost ruined by the weather. The contest itself wasn’t affected, but the joy of the wider event was. So instead of wandering around the burger and church fund-raising stalls, I stayed in my car in the supermarket car park, feeling somewhat glum, while … …
As the great EJ Thribb (17½) might have said: So. Farewell then Tony Blair. The Churchill of The modern era. Never was so much Promised to so many by So… few. Now you’re gone, So… phew. I’d be slightly more charitable than Private Eye‘s redoubtable wordsmith and obituarist, but an expectant universe will have to await my assessment — partly because, despite today’s announcement, he’ll still be PM for another seven weeks, and partly because it’s late, and I have the rare need to be up early in the morning to catch the London train. Tonight was a brisk and wet 4.8 miles with the running club. Slightly faster than was comfortable, which made it a good and worthwhile … …
4.6 miles on a cool evening, catching the last of the light. As part of my campaign to improve, I’ve resolved to extend my bog-standard 3½ mile round-the-block jog when I can. I’ve tacked on a detour which, I’m appalled to announce, includes a hill, or at least something that I would call a hill, but which, I suspect, some of the RC regulars would scoff at. I mean, it must be at least 15 metres high, and the incline stretches for a good 100 metres or so. Well, perhaps 75. But I’ve rarely, if ever, voluntarily chosen to include an up-bit in my repertoire, so I felt rather heroic about the project. Track du Jour? Well, I was trying … …
The Shinfield 10K was a sort of accidental race. A minute or so into this event, I suddenly thought: “Crikey, I’m running a race”. It was as if I’d suddenly woken up and found myself sleepwalking. In the real world, I’d opened my eyes at around 8 o’clock, got up and mooched around for a bit. Over a cup of coffee, I absent-mindedly checked out local 10K races for the coming months, and saw that there was one happening today, in just over an hour’s time. Hmm, well, why the hell not? If you want to know what the Shinfield 10K is like, think of the Boston Marathon, then go right to the other end of the spectrum. But this … …
i have always known that at last i would take this road, but yesterday i did not know that it would be today. Akira No Narihara Now then, friends… Sweder’s heroic battle with the Two Ocean’s Marathon (and if you’ve not read it, read it now) added a bit more fuel to a fire that’s been glowing for a few weeks now. I started thinking about all this a couple of months ago — shortly after my dismal performance at the Almeria Half, and Sweder’s tale has neatly stepped in to plod alongside, and offer encouragement to, my train of thought… I’ve been thinking how feebly we fight against the worst part of ourselves; how easily we accept … …
The early part of the morning was spent trying to finish a longer entry that I started to write some time ago — but it can wait another day or two. If I continue to suspend normal life on here, I’ll miss out recording the other good things that are happening. Like a really bouncey run this morning, around a six mile loop of the local fields. It wasn’t over-speedy but that was semi-deliberate. Today I truly wanted to run again, and to enjoy that sense of liberation and strength that’s been absent for a long time now. My Track du Jour came in the middle of the latest Pheddipidations podcast (Episode 95), which you’ll find here. (You may … …
Sunday, 19:30 Buon giorno. Just occasionally, it’s hard to imagine yourself happier. Or is that too controversial an idea for this world? As a voracious consumer of news, I feel under constant pressure to feel miserable. It pisses me off. Let’s follow our instincts, and laugh at the absurdity of it all. The madness is universal and omnipresent — though its intrinsic qualities are revealed only gradually, it seems. It must be why old people chuckle to themselves all the time. They don’t give a damn anymore. If it isn’t going to kill you within a week, it really aint worth worrying about. It’s early evening. I’m in Taormina, Sicily, sitting on the sunlit terrace of our hotel room, … …