Sweet Home Wolverhampton...

A bit of a self indulgent blog, and not entirely about running. Possibly the old taper madness kicking in, but bear with, bear with...

The Wednesday after my seaside weekend I got another cold. A snotty sneezy one with a lovely husky voice  but not as bad as the one I had after the Cambridge Half. Still annoying though, and combined with the windy conditions we've had it has made all my running feel pretty shit - I've felt like a knackered old carthorse. Shoot me now. My brain says it should be feeling easier and it has not been. However my heart rate shows no difference really so in physiological terms I guess I'm OK. It's just in my head.

I've started to feel a bit down. I can't help it. Why is this? I can see how lucky I am.

I've had a few people at work recently take me to one side and mutter things like "don't let it all bother you". I have felt a bit stressed but have no idea what it is looking like outwardly to other people - they can obviously tell a difference. We have had a lot of stuff going on over the past few weeks (including my team being purchased by another company, so TUPE etc) I don't really want to talk about work in detail here - you never know who is reading, I don't have any axe to grind to be honest. I feel a bit on edge but in my eyes I'm not acting differently?! So dear reader, if you feel the need put a comment on this blog as to how you percieve me as a person in 3 words or something because I'm starting to wonder if I have a clue how I appear outwardly to other people in work as well as general life. Scary huh?

Some would say it's only work but I'm made differently. I can't stand not being able to do the best job I can possibly do, weather that is down to my own inadequacies (in which case mental self beatings) or someone else's fuckuppage - if someone else is the problem I'm consumed by inner annoyance that I'm usually too much of a pansy to have a go about. I am a I.T. technical geek (my purse is made out of recycled circuit boards 8-) ) and I like what I do, but at the moment what I'm doing isn't really challenging me. I wouldn't say I'm bored but it's getting that way. I also feel like I'm viewed as some sort of monkey only good for doing monkey work, and everyone seems to have forgotten where my skills actually are, one of these is being able to pick things up pretty quickly and apply them which I think is fairly rare - what a waste. I am torn in my feelings because for all its faults I actually quite like where I'm working at the moment and when they day comes I have to go - which will probably be soon, I will be really quite upset. I am actually scared of having to work from home again, I think I'd end up going doolally.

It's a good job home workers don't have webcams on teleconferences

My days consist of this work, and my evenings consist of sitting in a hotel room working. Of course I'm getting paid for this, I'm not STUPID(!) and no one is forcing me but it is tedious, there is more to life and I feel like I'm missing out somehow. I'm not sure what I'm looking for, and therefore not sure how to change it. Get out of current contract, find interesting work, spend time at home and consider what I want to do? Maybe one day I'd consider doing an Ironman - I'd have to be home based to train. I'd quite like to do a course in sports massage, and bootcamp with my pals, all of which require me being at home really. Gosh it sounds like a mid life crisis brewing doesn't it. Before you know it I'll have pink hair and a Ferrari.

Talking of being at home, ah... home sweet home. I have lived in my current place for 5 years. I own a house that I used to live in years ago over the other side of Birmingham, but for various reasons I feel this is not my "home" any more and I want to keep it as an investment rather than live in it so I have tenants that an Estate Agent manages for me. So I reside in my posh flat in Wolverhampton that I rent myself whilst my own tenants cover my actual mortgage. I love the place I'm living in. It is convenient for all aspects of my life at the moment, and I feel safe, secure and calm when I'm at home. The problem with renting however is you are sometimes at the mercy of other peoples cock ups, and this time last year the company I rented off folded, they took out too many mortgages at a time the banks would lend to anyone. So recession presumably equals non payment on their part, prompting all kinds of "YOU WILL BE EVICTED" letters in my postbox from the Court and Bank. I came to an arrangement with the receivers in April 2012 that they became my landlord and it was all happy happy happy for a year with a small black cloud hanging over in the back of my mind. I knew it couldn't go on for ever. I'm surprised I've been so strong about it. At times I've felt like I've been crumbling a bit but pulled it back. I know I'm not on the streets but this place means a lot to me.

So I got home Wednesday night to find a letter with some all too familiar franking and found myself muttering "shit shit shit" out loud whilst opening it with slightly trembling hands. It was what I'd been expecting for a year, and I've got to be out by the middle of June. At least I've had a reasonable amount of notice, and I'm quite a minimalist person with furniture and nik-naks but I've been making a conscious effort to not collect clutter since last years indicator of the issues. Seeing a date for leaving in black and white upset me though, and caused me not to be able to sleep on Weds night. If you're awake at 2 am you might as well have a look on Rightmove, right? There are almost 30 apartments where I live and it turns out two of them are empty and currently on the rental market. I managed to get viewings yesterday, one flat was tatty decor wise, one was really nice so I've moved quickly and I managed to get the nice one I wanted. So I'm moving literally across a courtyard. Weird but true. At some point I will leave for good, it's not where I envisage spending the rest of my life, but I want to take my time choosing a house to buy and "properly" settle down in.

At least my moving costs will be minimal, and having lived here for 5 years I know it's safe / quiet etc. But its un-nerving and it's another stress I don't need really. Can't help being a worrier.

However, on a positive note, all this is distracting me from thoughts of the Manchester Marathon, which is possibly a good thing! I'm hoping with a relaxing week next week I will be peaking in time to go for that sub 4 at Manchester. I'm running better than last year, I'm up for it and the weather can't possibly be as bad as last year. Can it? Well if it all goes tits up it's ok, I'm sure I will enjoy it whatever. I have worked out all the scenarios and plans in my head. What can possibly go wrong?!?!

Sleet, Fancy cakes, Sunshine and I do like to be beside the seaside....

Well I won't bang on about it, but after the Rhayader / Ashby weekend I went through a prolonged period of snotting, coughing and losing my voice. I guess my upper chest being covered in snow for 7 miles, 3h26m of breathing in and out cold air on both days didn't aid my recovery. Would have been nice to have had someone bringing me chicken soup, trashy magazines and re filling my hot water bottle with well timed sympathetic "aaahs" but instead I trudged up and down the M5 to work as normal and took to swigging at a bottle of #CO-VO-NIA!# from my desk.

Despite having been able to train as it was all above the neck, in my head I felt like I'd lost fitness - in reality I don't think this was true, I had not missed any runs and sensibly backed off a bit on run pace where necessary but it was all feeling a little bit tougher because of fighting the lurgi. My legs were OK after the double 20 weekend and Wednesdays hill session I surprised myself by having a better one than I thought I would despite reverting back to croaky afterwards.

*cough* *cough* *cough* *cough* SHUT UP!!!!!!

So the next weekend I was up in Cambridge to see my parents, also to run the Oakley 20. I had a great run there last year and actually got s bit of a tan. Well - on the Friday morning before Oakley weekend in 2013, "snowmageddon" had hit the Midlands as predicted; thankfully I got up and out to Bristol at a ridiculous hour before the morons hit the roads so it was a relatively stress free journey. South of Birmingham / North Worcester there was no snow at all, and in the evening I trekked along the M4 / M25 / A1M from Bristol to Cambridge. It was snow free on the ground but I had a horrible dark sleet blowing at the windscreen experience. Yuk.

I opened the curtains in Cambridge early on Saturday morning with a view to going to the Wimpole ParkRun for a bit of XC effort. However a blizzard was coming down heavily, I assumed they would cancel so went back to bed. When I surfaced at about 10.00am and checked - it was on. Gah!!! Oops. I'm not obsessive, but do I appreciate the benefits of my ParkRuns as a weekend speed session, so if I miss something like this I do try and make it up somehow later in the day. In this case there was no other way. A WU, a solo 5K effort at 5K pace and a WD.

Now I don't usually really care what the weather is, I will go out regardless. There is something quite nice about running in the rain in summer, overheating, the heavens opening and getting soaked to the skin with rain dripping off of your nose and off of the ends of your fingers, let's cut that romantic vision back to a "spring" day in March. This speed work session was horrific. I love my running but it was really soul destroying. The sky was grey, light snow was blowing in to my eyes, the wind was so fierce and bitter it was stinging my face to the point where it was quite painful. I managed a good pace but again it felt too hard. I went back to my parents and brooded over how shit I felt for the rest of the afternoon. Still, there had been no snow forecast for Oakley so that would be good. Ooooh a text. For meeee?!?! Oakley cancelled. Flippin' brilliant. I feel sorry for race directors when this sort of thing happens, it is a hard task organising a race and despite it being a total act of god, all people seem to do is moan about the cancellation and start fishing for refunds when it is just one of those things.

The next morning, we'd had a snow scattering in Cambridge. A photo appeared of the race HQ at Oakely - quite thick snow, significantly more than we had. I decided to make the most of the relatively good conditions in Cambridge and get on with it, at Oakley I was supposed to inject some pace in the middle miles, but hey a slow 20 is better than no 20. In the end, the paths were so good, I gave it a crack and managed to do what I was supposed to do. If you don't give it a go you'll never know.

The following week was still freezing, but I managed to crank out a monster speed work session, 12 x 0.33 mile reps with a relatively short amount of recovery. I've been doing these sessions for a long time, but I felt like I was flying that evening. I run the reps in these sessions just using the force, and all the reps were within about 3 seconds of each other, no drop off in pace at the end, so consistent. It gave me a boost to know my speed endurance is coming along well. I had to smile every time I whizzed past a solitary snowman that was still standing tall in the middle of relatively dry pavements on the estate we do our interval loops on. There are still large patches of snow on the fields even now.

Snow causes chaos yet again...

This brings us to the Easter weekend, and I was supposed to do the Maidenhead Easter 10. A duff car battery put pay to that. I can't say I was 'pleased' but I didn't really feel as up for it as I did for say, the Cambridge half so I think it's fair to say I was less annoyed than I could have been. I shifted my training around and did an easy run after getting things sorted, then off to Cambridge again. Having been in Cambridge quite a few weekends recently, the thought 22 miles round the same places didn't fill me with joy. Luckily on searching I found a trail race that looked interesting. 16 miles from Ely to Cambridge, meeting on the Common, get bussed to Ely and then run back along the river path. However with an imminent off road training run I decided to be sensible Saturday and do a nice tarmac parkrun and had my first visit to Bedford.

I think I was feeling a bit tired from the mid week speed work session, but I gave Bedford a good go. There were so many chattering people at the race briefing, I heard the lady go "blah blah bandstand blah blah finish" - ok I had it sorted in my head. I set off, feeling ok, pretty much steadily overtaking. After a couple of laps, I was convinced the next time at the Bandstand was the end, so I kicked a bit. It didn't feel quite right though and people appeared to be still going round. I usually run 5Ks again using the force, and glancing at my garmin I'd only done 2.5 miles. So I'd quite severely misjudged it. I managed to hang on for 24.49. I know parkrun is free and I do appreciate everyone involved in the running of these events but I'm positive my time was 2 places out - it was too big a margin - 11 sec - out and I did start my watch on the gun. I emailed the mailbox but not even a reply to say "actually we think we are correct". Oh well. It's a good course and I will definitely be back. Before and after the run I bumped in to C and A who showed me one of the best kept secrets in Bedford (I worked in Bedford for almost 2 years and I never found it). It was lovely to catch up with them and in the most amazing cake shop ever. I just stood open mouthed a the selection on display, like a kid in a... cake shop!

*drool*

In the end I went for the Neapolitan style sponge with the pink and white icing in the middle. It must have been about 20 cm tall! Yeah!!! :-D

Easter Sunday the eggs had to wait. The clocks had gone back, so *yawn* I was waiting for the race bus at 7.45 which was actually 6.45. Got on, dozed off for half an hour. Yes I am a finely tuned athlete poised like a coiled spring to leap in to action. The route started near Ely station, and follows the "Fen Rivers Way" back to Cambridge. The section between Waterbeach and Cambridge I know very well, the Ely to Waterbeach section not so much but the race briefing consisted of "keep the river on your left till you get to the Green Dragon pub in Cambridge, then keep it on your right, and follow the footpath signs with the Eel on" Okey dokey then. For off road it wasn't too bad. As it had been dry I decided to risk road shoes, especially as I was going to be doing 22 in total, and apart from some muddy / knobbly bits there was nothing very technical. Most of it was running on fairly flat grass. The landscape was flat, you cold see for miles the dark black soil and plastic crop covers. A food table at 10 miles was welcome, with Bananas, sweets and cups of coke / water. After this I knew where I was and the last 6 miles in were a breeze. On the line I got given a medal which I was fairly underwhelmed by, however I was overjoyed by the creme egg, and off I trotted around the backs and Newnham in the (very cold) sunshine. Happy days.

Last week was our club's handicap race, in memory of a gentleman who used to be on the running club committee, club Treasurer in fact. I decided not to run this year, I am rubbish at racing on dimly lit routes in the evening, and this close to Manchester I didn't want to risk face planting on a tree root so I did a fairly hard speed work session in the day. It is interesting to see here what people put down as a recent 10K time (!!!), this is how we calculate the handicaps - the slower runners go off first, the faster runners last, and in theory if we have got everything right (and we've been given accurate times) all the runners should arrive back at the club at the same time. It was really nice to see some of our 36 minute 10K-ers and 1:26 minute 10K-ers in the same race, coming in close together, having fun and pretty much everyone sporting club kit.

Some of the mighty SRC

We have had a lot of new members recently, but new and old it still makes me proud to see a bunch of such happy runners nice people all together at the club enjoying their running.

So the weekend just gone I had to do my last 20. Rather than do the same old routes, S had mentioned she was doing the Bournemouth Half, so I asked if I could tag along. The intention was to run 7 miles beforehand, and then the half. 2 miles in to the half I would go in to "turbo mode" for 10 miles (Marathon pace) and jogging in home the last mile. I got a number in the Half and I got a room in the same Hotel.

It was all very civilised - I got picked up just before 3pm on Sat, and by 5.30 we were at the hotel. Turns out the hotel was a) 5 minutes from the station where another friend was coming in from, and b) 5 mins from the pier where the race started. There was an Italian (well... ASK) restaurant across the road where we had a really nice meal, and a Tesco Express the other side of the roundabout where we could stock up on goodies (by that I mean bananas / bagels) for immediate refuelling after the race. The hotel was very old fashioned with flowery bedspreads (all that was missing were those toilet roll covers that are shaped like ladies in ball gowns), but considering the usual clientele that was to be expected. They were very accommodating, and when we announced our diva demands of cereal at 07.30, and "could we have a checkout at 2pm so we can come back and have a shower please" they were really really good about it.

Guardian of the loo roll

So at about 8.30 I snuk off to do my 7 miles. I went along the cliff top road, going down on to the front for 3.5 miles then coming back. On the way back it was actually quite warm, so I ended up doing a detour and going back to the hotel, bumping in to S, taking half her clothes back, getting changed in 30 seconds in to some cooler attire myself. I jogged back down to the start, literally 5 mins hovering around and the gun went off. Perfect timing. The first 2 miles of the course are a little uphill, so I was glad of the starting slow plan, then I attempted to do Marathon Pace for another 10. I say attempted because it felt hard. It messed with my head a bit until I realised the wind coming off the sea was actually causing this false impression of effort. My MP efforts were all sub 9.00mm apart from one mile with a major hill, so I can't really complain, and hopefully this bodes well for less than 3 weeks time. I liked the course, despite the wind the seafront was nice and sunny, and then in the later miles we wound our way up on to the cliff roads and back down again. It started to feel like spring time.

At the finish I had a chap almost pass out in front of me. Slightly disappointed I had to argue with a marshal to get not one but TWO bottles of water how dare I (one for me one for him) but I got let off when he saw my "patient" leaning against the railings looking like he was going to vomit. Mr queezy seemed to perk up quite quickly thank goodness, I need to get myself on a first aid course or something because I didn't really know what to do, no one was rushing to help and I felt quite out of my depth if I'm honest. After a few mins of me telling him to take some deep breaths and sips of water, he convinced me he was OK and that he didn't want me to find or get anyone so off I went. He was very sweet and said thank you and also well done on the run. I didn't have the heart to tell him about the 7.5 mile WU but if I was on the deck I'd hope someone would check if I was OK so the thanks was appreciated.

I was glad to have a shower at the hotel, it was quite warm out there and 3 hours back in the car would have been a bit of a stinky experience. We had a somewhat slower drive back, stopping to get some drinks and also dining at the Little Chef on the A34 near Oxford. I'd clocked it on the way down, it looked like it had been refurbed. They are not really my scene, but by the look of things the menu is similar to what it has always been, with was some new / interesting and even vaguely healthy stuff on there, we were actually quite impressed. I felt my face glowing on the way home. I have a slight tan.

And there you have it, last 20 miler done for now. Taper time - let insanity commence.