of running and stuff

well after yesterdays ride home i was left with a logisitcal issue….. having to be in cirencester this morning some 60miles in almost the opposite direction to my usual place of work.

unfortunately cycling yesterday meant that my laptop stayed tucked up safely at work, meaning a 7am start to pick it up this morning before travelling on. the only hidden bonus to this was that from there its then quicker to go down the motorway than the usual x-country single carraigeway a-road which inevitably ends up stuck behind a truck or tractor etc.

anyway.. 2hrs15 later here i am… think i’d rather have cycled even if it was a bit wet today.

a slightly eerie feeling riding to work this morning in the fog, albeit inspiringly poetic.
the three of us like little boys venturing out into the darkness, our normally mediocre lights turned to light sabres cutting into the fog picking out every water droplet and even the rear lights leaving a swathe of pink mist behind.

the roads took on a new form, several times i found myself wondering quite where we were, the occasionalt roadside landmark being the only clues.

the further out of the urban heatsink we got the thicker it became. it wasn’t raining but i found myself getting wet, individual fibres on my black gloves picked out in a dewy white wetness and my helmet & chest gently dampened.

i’m sure if you had been following you could have followed the shape of a cyclist (or three) cut through the mist, or at least a fleeting glimpse of one as it eddied back into the gloom.

all too soon the quiet country lanes were over as the sight of the motorway signalled the start of the next urban sink as the fog eased and the traffic increased.

all in all a lovely ride in that will be remembered for a little while at least.

on the way back from swimming (club session, 2.5km or so in the hour) i got passed by one of these dodge pickup things. now i’ve seen these things about but it was only tonight when i wasn’t expecting it (i’d seen the lights coming of course) the i realised how hideously mahoosive these things are!

it barely fitted in the fast lane as it came past and made me feel like i was driving a go kart. i had to double check this wasn’t some comedy pumped up special but not, an off the shelf production model. the top of the flap on the pickup bit was above the roofline of most of the (by no means small) salloon cars.

i’m fairly sure that with appropriate ramps i could have fitted our smart car in the back.

so my advice if you see one of these coming on a single carraigeway… drive… DRIVE for you life.

well i’m cycling to work twice a week at the moment.

by complete luck its always been dry on the way in, mostly rained torrentially during the day and then cleared up by the time i go home.

today however after a quick glance at multimap before the off i decided to try a different route.
i usually avoid where possible busy roads & town centers but i must confess to loving a quick play in the traffic, especially where as it was this evening in solihull i’m significantly faster than the average speed of the traffic.

all was going well if rather damply when i got to the section of my route i knew least well, no matter since i’d memorised the turnings & road names. fortunately it had stopped tipping it down by now but at the first junction i reached i didn’t recognise any of the road names and the finger post made little sense.

i went half a few hundred meters down the first option before deciding it was wrong… then all the way down the other option to find a main road i wasn’t expecting. back to the junction and down the first one far enough to confirm my suspicions, definitely the wrong way.

no here’s where it got cunning, i paused and switched my gps to map mode and looked at the traces of where i’d just been. recalling the road layout on multimap it looked like i had gone too far although there definitely wasn’t a junction earlier. i concluded that the road on multimap wasn’t a real road but a bridleway i had passed.

so i went back up and thought what the heck i’ll try it. squirming a couple of miles in the mud and gravel on slick tyres was immensely fun! again i took a wrong turn and backtracked to a junction in the trails (i didn’t have a clue quite where i was or where each branch went but for some reason i took a dislike to the one i’d chosen). climbing now and concentrating hard to keep the maximum traction on the rear wheel, knowing at any second it could just spin and leave me standing in a puddle.

finally, aside from a few nettle stings i made it grinning to a road, and chose to go right just cos it felt right.. no actually i think i consulted the gps map again and decided right was more of a straight line than left. another random/gps guided left turn and i was amazed to recognise the road name i was originally looking for.

in theory this meant turn right onto it and next left…. which it was.

after a final battle through town i arrived home muddy & wet….. to find a bath ready and waiting… fab.

vi) servicing your bike with clean trousers on is a recipe for disaster.

at the melton mowbray food & drink festival thing:
i) both buffalo & bison are pretty tasty mashed up & grilled as a burger
ii) they do make good pork pies

at swimming:
iii) swimming with clenched fists, you can get quite a bit of push off your forearms in the latter part of a front crawl stroke
iv) swimming with open fingers, makes depressingly little difference. conclusion: dont sweat the fingers toooo much.
v) still can’t swim backstroke in a straight line.

how surprising

just been for a swim in a pool that has some ozone cleaning system which i had hoped would make it less chloriney…. but my sniffling & sneezing has been worse than ever all afternoon.. so i guess not

i also watched bemused as a chap from my lane approached the girl in the next lane to give her some pointers on her front crawl…. how subtle is that? i asked him after a few more lengths if he had any critique for me but he apparently hadn’t been really watching… hmmmmm.
(we then got into a brief discussion with the other chap in the lane about the finer details of breathing & body roll which made me late back to work).

ho hum.. lets hope i can ressurect this blog… much time and any running related wisdom over the last year has been poured into my ultrarunner site. however with next year being a tri year i may need an outlet for my 3 pointed musings.

for some reason i feel the urge to come on and share this with you….

for some time i had been plagued with a verruca on one of my big toes, huge, slowly spreading, and resistant to most forms of treatment & abuse i’d been able to throw at it. it was annoying but never really caused a problem, kept itself to itself so i didnt overly worry about it.

then at the end of may i did this silly race (different story which summarises as: 145miles running, birmingham to london non-stop, 44hrs28minutes). as you’d expect my feet were quite a state, swollen, bruised & blistered.

however when they finally recovered, the freshly revealed skin was hardening up and the dead flaps were peeling themselves away (lovely image no?), i was amazed to find that somewhere along the way, this verruca had completely given up the ghost, packed its bags and slung its hook.

naturally ever since this has become my recomendation to anyone suffering a particularly persistant verruca.