It was nice to be away, but it's even nicer to be back home again, the 17 odd hours of travel back from Singapore wasn't much fun, I can't normally sit still for 5 minutes, so 14 hours of enforced incarceration was never going to be pleasant. As for temperature difference, 31 degrees one minute, 3 degrees and frosty the next. It was nearly enough to make me turn around and get straight back on the plane again! Before I left for sunnier places I'd spotted that our friends at Saturn Running had put together a cheeky wee Midweek marathon, handily being run on Friday 31 Jan, and thus, perfectly timed for my arrival back home. I had a spare day's leave to use up and it seemed like an ideal opportunity to get a winter marathon on the books, start the year as we mean to go on and all that jazz. And thus it was, that I found myself, stood on the banks of the River Thames at Egham (Surrey) at 08:30, on what turned out to be an unusually warm January morning, passing the time with a handful of other like minded lunatics, waiting for the nice man to say, GO! It wasn't the most interesting course, a smidgen over 1 & 1/2 miles up the bank of the Thames towards London, turn around and back you come, repeat 8 times for a full marathon, or as many times as you can before you lose the will to live! Like I said, not the most interesting course, but easy to manage, access to drinks etc every 3 or so miles, not too muddy, no traffic, pan flat, and better than slogging along on the road. There's not really much to say about the run itself, I was a bit overdressed, having not expected it to be as warm as it was, and suffered a bit with being too hot, struggling a little towards the end, but nothing to serious, or worthy of comment. To be honest I don't really think running a Marathon off the back of a trip away and a long plane journey was my best ever idea. I'm also coming to the conclusion that these flat courses don't really suit me. I seem to do better, and enjoy myself more, on the hilly off road stuff, that most normal people avoid. Excuses made, a time of 3:52 is pretty slow by my current standard, but, among the esteemed turnout (I've never seen so many 100 marathon club members in one place) is one I'm reasonably happy with. Whilst I was off running around like an idiot the lovely Emma, took delivery of this little lot. I've mentioned before my plans to build a fruit cage over the allotment to stop those pesky Pigeons eating my tea and this little lot will form the cage itself. It's not going to be cheap, but I'm hoping that the old adage of do it properly first time, will come into play and I'll recoup my outlay in the long run. In the few years that I've had my plot, I've seen numerous attempts at wooden cages made on other plots, all of which either succumb to the wind or the posts rot away in a few years, so fingers crossed this will work out better and be cheaper in the long term. So first things first, and it's out with the angle grinder to cut some of those bits to length and drive the neighbors mad (they must really hate me when I get going on a project). The next issue was obviously how to get that little lot from the back garden to the allotment. If only some idiot hadn't converted their van into a plush camper! Not to worry, where there's a will there's a way, and a little ingenuity soon overcame the transport issue. Miraculously the whole lot found it's way to the allotment Saturday morning, courtesy of my right shoulder and a lot of humping and dumping, "free phys" as they say. A few hours hard graft, a bit of swearing, a chat with Kevin and Tom on the plot opposite, half an hour searching for the Allen key when it fell out of the drill (Cheers Tom), a couple of brew's, a cream egg courtesy of Kevin (Cheers Kevin), and what have we got? It, still needs a bit of fettling and leveling up, a door making, gravel boards around the base and a few other bit's and bob's sorting out, but not a bad days work and I'm happy with progress to date. The net won't get put on until the spring and all chance of snow has passed, it's surprising how heavy a bit of snow is, so there's no point taking any chances on that front. Oh, and I could have saved a few pounds by actually measuring things, instead I've got 20 odd meters of tube left over, now what can I use that for? I spotted these little fellows poking their heads above the parapet in the garden today when I came in at 17:00. Not only an early sign that spring is on it's way but it was still light too, it's only 5 weeks since the shortest day but things are defiantly looking up!
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Paul PerrattOld enough to know better, young enough to still feel invincible, stupid enough to keep on trying the same thing again and again. Cyclist, Gardener, Runner, Hiker, Cook, Woodworker, Engineer, Jack of all trades and master of none, Anti social old git and all round miserable bugger. Archives
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