Red Lace Day

The red laces arrived in the post on Monday. No, this is not some sort of coded message or medical term, it marks the arrival of our London Marathon pack...which also translates into HELP IT'S ONLY A MONTH AWAY!

The training is sort of going well. I have managed a few 20 milers now and one was slow, one was quick and then on Sunday somewhere in between. I am trying to learn from my mistakes and with just one more to go I hope i will get it right. I am not racing this year before the marathon, so I am really having to use my built in pace judgement detector on the day.

It looks like London is going to be a busy place that weekend. Along with the 35000+ runners, their families and friends, there is also going to be half of the north west of England as the FA in their stupidity have put both the Man Utd v Man City, and Stoke v Bolton semi finals on at Wem-ber-ley that weekend. The FA have got their figures wrong as they are only expecting 20,000 runners. What a merry time it will be on the streets of London and even better still on the trains. Still, what dream weekend that would be a derby semi on the Saturday, marathon on Sunday. Fingers crossed!

Wild Things

It's creeping up to that time of year when everything bursts into life. I love spring for the wildlife and I went out for a 13.75 mile training run at 7.30am today and immediately encountered loads of it. First up, some visually impaired deer in the woods. I say that because I was wearing a high viz shirt and they did not notice me until I was 10ft away from them. Hovering above was the sparrow hawk. The trees were full of small birds and the noise of their bird song at that time of the day is amazing. That was my first mile! Later as i passed through the John Muir Country Park
and passed the salt marshes and estuary, herons, swans and geese were plentiful. Further on up to Law Head is a vantage point that takes in the full range of the Lammermuir Hills , which were looking very inviting. Maybe next week for my long slow run? A good run at just over 95 minutes today and feeling strong enough to enjoy the views.

Eye Eye

I went to do my embarrassing dad duties on Saturday and watched Isabelle play hockey. I arrived 5 minutes into the game only to discover Isabelle sidelined holding an ice pack on her head. Hit in the eye with a hockey ball after 3 minutes of play. Fortunately any damage is superficial and she's got a cracking black eye today.

Earlier in the week I discovered the joys of emergency dental treatment. Not for me, but for Stuart who was in a really bad way with tooth ache. On the advice of the dental nurse on the phone, we made the trip into Edinburgh to get it checked out. Needless to say there's a bit of work to be done there and biscuits are off the menu for a while.

A bit nippy

Had to visit the Dr today with my latest running acquired injury (for some people, the next few lines of this post might sound a bit sexy!). I did a long hard one the other day in the rain. My wet t-shirt was clinging to my chest and consequently a bit of friction on the nipples led to the outer skin wearing away and blood was drawn. A week later a nice big lump appeared on the left nipple which was quite sore. Was I having some sort of phantom pregnancy thing and would I find myself lactating at the sound of baby cries? Not quite, but some weird puss did ooze out when I squeezed it, but I don't think it was edible. Anyway, the doc reckons it is an infection so I'm on course of med's for a week to see if I can reduce it a cup size or two. Meanwhile I have taken to wearing blister plasters for extra protection. Not a pretty sight and one hope I don't have an accident and end up in hospital with a lot of explaining to do to the nurses. Hang on...this is the same scenario my mum used to paint when she tried to make me and our Colin wear clean undies. "If you got knocked over and taken to hospital what would they think if you had dirty undies on?" (I did get knocked over once and sent to hospital and thankfully I passed the Grubby Undies Detector test).

Meanwhile back on the nipple...I enjoyed reading this article about those London people who really are a bunch of tits.


I wonder if they do raspberry ripple?