Thursday, 18th February – 66 days to go

Have an OMG moment when I peer out the window in the morning. Why am I always surprised when it’s snowed overnight? Thought we’d seen the last of the white stuff so I hope it does the decent thing and melts away.

Our numbers for the John Carr series of 5k have arrived. I say arrived, I had to go and get them from the Royal Mail sorting office because in an act of not untypical f*!@wittery I’ve used an ordinary 1st class stamp on an envelope that’s about a millimetre bigger than A5 and Royal Mail have decided that this is a “large envelope”.

Decide to do the weekly shop at Asda while we’re collecting the envelope in order to justify the trip. During the course of shopping I (we) have made some decisions about nutrition. Not surprisingly it’s all bad news. No cream on my porridge or cereal. I was brought up on green top TB-laden milk and the modern stuff just doesn’t cut the mustard so I always add cream to my brekky. This will be sorely missed. No butter. I have to make do with some sort of margarine that has been re-branded as “I Can’t Believe Anybody Could Possibly Think This Is Butter” or some such. Options drinking chocolate – 5 for £1. I load up the trolley with bananas which Liz tries to put back. She’s the only one in our house who eats bananas. I’ve eaten two bananas in the last forty five years and both occasions are etched on my memory. I can’t stand them but have decided that they’re the perfect on run snack. They’re cheap, full range at Sainsbury’s is FairTrade so can tick the middle class right on box without actually having to do anything and when you’ve eaten the thing you can just lob the skin into the nearest hedgerow cos’ they’re organic (only joking). Training my palate to actually like them may be something of a challenge. Liz clearly thinks I’m not up to the challenge of eating raw bananas as she heaps in loads of other fruits and mutters something about bananas being a good base for smoothies.

Thursday evening is Distance Training. Sleet has been falling all afternoon and carries on as we arrive at Undercliffe Cricket Club and meet up with the Thursday nighters. We do the warm up exercises and follow it up with a two mile jog to the start of the short tempo session. Gill pulls up injured part way out and I feel like sacking it and going home. I just can’t get warmed up. The short tempo consists of running out for 12.5 minutes at just over 10k pace, then turn round and run back. As we’re a mixed ability group we should all run a different distance and then arrive back at the starting point at the same time. This bit of the session goes really well considering the weather conditions and greasy surface of the pavement. I finally begin to feel warm, but by the end of the session I’m frozen stiff. It’s another session in the bank, but I would never have ventured out on my own. I guess this is one of the advantages of group running in that it gets you out and working when otherwise you’d be slumped on the couch watching telly and taking in calories.

Decide to warm up by taking a small(ish) Jameson’s into the bath. Remember I’m on the wagon so reluctantly hand over the Jameson’s and make do with an Options Hot Chocolate with Mint. It’s pants. It isn’t often you can say something cost 20p and was a rip off. Will have to find another pick me up in future.