Wierd News of the Week

Tweeted by my mate David Eyre.  Wanna job in Scotland?  Try North Lanarkshire.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/07/29103916/5

Who would have thought that only the Orkney Islands has higher employment growth than the boil on the back of the central belt that I call home?  

Running Update

Thursday:  I couldn't be bothered.  Did a Medja lunch instead with Ali H, Sweetie Darling.  Then we had an impromptu slab laying party.  Stay tuned for pictures of Ross's first wall and first shed foundation.
Friday: Miserable interval training that I bailed out of early.
Saturday: Decent tempo run marred by some very 90's choices from the music shuffle.  I'd forgotten I'd loaded both Beth Orton and Pop Will Eat Itself.  Eurgh.

And for tomorrow: I'm aiming for my first 10 miler.  Weather gods please be kind...

Spot the baby

Where's baby Josh?  The even tougher challenge is spotting the 13 year old who didn't want to be photographed.  He's behind me...

Van-tastic!

Our entire Wednesday was lost to the delights of a snap web purchase.  We took this much cash:

And swapped it for this:

Yes, an ex-Royal Mail 2002 LDV Pilot.  You can still see the Royal Mail sticker mark on the side but sadly, it did not come with a black and white cat.  We're going to kit it out with a bed and kitchen and drive off into the sunset, rattling and clanking at about 60mph.  My dream is to make it over the Alps to Mum's.  Ross's dream is to have it so souped up and insulated that we can do that in mid-winter...

PS: I did my 40 minute run first thing so I was actually asleep most of the way round.  Which could explain why I was so slow.

Hate is just too short a word.

The title of this blog has a dual purpose.  On long summer evenings after a day making good films with great people it's a reminder of how happy I am.  On other days it's a bitter joke.  Days like today.  

I abhor interval training, it's tough and always disappointing.  Other runners always pass me while I'm recovering, and never see me actually belting it out.  

I despise our postmistress, because despite my antipodean mailings keeping her shop going she is always cold and grumpy.  (I've had years of this now, come ON lady!) 

I dislike the gang of ten year olds that set fire to things in the park and throw rocks at me as I pass.  

I detest the teenage warfare between the two villages that leaves the woods a mess of graffiti and broken bottles.

I'm disgusted by the be-fouled cycle path entrance, covered in dogshit, rubbish and grease from god-knows-what.

And most of all, I'm annoyed that I let it get to me.  Grrr.

It is Done

No backing out now there's 29 quid riding on it...

Loving it Again

We are legends.  Kirsty and I did a mega run yesterday, through the many trails of the most beautiful city I've ever lived in:

Yep, we rock.  A righteous 8 miles, and we walked the 9th before scoffing cherries, raspberries and strawberries back at Leith.

I'd also walked from Cannonmills to Leith (2 miles) after a long breakfast and blether with Stuart.  I left Edinburgh in time to help Jamie play Giant Lego (aka furniture shifting) at Hope St, fuelled by pistachio nuts, smoothies and plums.  My mates all have great taste in food.  Although I'm sniggering after writing nuts and plums.  

Growing to Loathe my Garmin

Especially the way it calculates my sweat and rasping breath into cold statistics I can't shy from.
I'm not running fast enough, long enough or hard enough and now I have proof with every nagging beep.
Do athletes hate their coaches?  All the way to the podium, sure...

GGrrrrr

Even before I made it even groovier and more ironic this website got hacked.  There goes an hour of my time trying to get rid of some freak religious website on MY ADDRESS.  Damn the internet.

I Get Bored Easily

You think I change my hair colour a lot?  I'm even worse with blog templates.  Welcome to the revised version of Lovesong To Lanarkshire.

Things We Saw Yesterday

As well as a picnic by the Clyde, three episodes of Judge Judy, a 20 minute run, the final throes of the Wasted Magazine being put together, and an art installation (a fake building project in George Square) I was also privileged to hang out with the nurses of Glasgow Royal's respiratory ward as they let their hair down on a Friday night. But for you lot, thanks to my stupid phone camera taking ages to focus, I only took pictures of these things:

Central Station, Glasgow

George Square, the little Paris...

North Lanarkshire Pylons

North Lanarkshire, UP

And Ross took a video of this:

Summer! There's so much to do and so many hours in the day! YAY!

Blatant Ratings Grab

40 minutes easy running, stopping to say hi to the old guys in the bus stop and to take a picture of a bee, posing on the symbol of my adopted home... Everybody say AWWWWW.

Cool Noises

Less than a week after hearing the worst sound in the world I'm rewarded with one of the best. For the first time ever my sports watch told me I was going TOO FAST. Delightful beep.

Lets gloss over the fact that maybe I set my workout a little too easy. That graph looks nothing like a decent interval session should...

Arrrrrghh.

Ooooh. Eeeeehhh. OOOOWWWWWW.
10 miles through light rain and it was agony. The last two miles felt Terminator-2-through-liquid-nitrogen leg snapping bad. I was just a bag of aching bones staggering on stumps. The worst part is that 10 miles took me nearly two hours. I now have to work out how to jam another three miles into that time just to get to my average, let alone a personal best.

Arrrgh.
Ow.

Post Party Haiku

Neurons flickering
Synapses failing to fire
Sunday Afternoon


Can't party all night then run 10 miles in the morning. There wasn't even a morning...
Oops.

Pubtastic

It's already all gone horribly wrong. On Wednesday, instead of a run I worked a 17 hour day in torrential rain. I met this guy:



Because I was working with this guy:



who I can report was stoic in the face of the news that his job had just been swept from London to the depths of Salford Quay, Manchester. Imagine being told your whole life has to shift from Auckland to Kaitaia. You'd just quit and stay nearer the action.

I slept till midday the next day, only getting up to stagger into town for a spot of networking and a pub crawl with Rosco. Half pints or spirits only, quantity of pubs rather than quality. During our tour of about 8-10 pubs (never trust the count) we renamed the days of the week, and now have an appropriate hand signal sorted for "I can fly a galaxy class starship through the hole in your argument, SIDEWAYS." It was important relationship time well spent. However, instead of sleeping it off the next morning we were woken by the worst sound in the world - the landline at 5am.

I don't want to belittle Julian's obvious agony as his appendix worked its way towards popping but I'm glad that's all it was, and that the call came from Julie needing help getting him to the hospital, rather than the police with news of death. Julian is currently under observation at home, and I'm using him as my excuse for only walking yesterday, and not running. Four hours sleep on mixed spirits does not an athlete make.

However, today I have no excuse, and after missing massive chunks of my training programme already I need to just get out and get going. For tonight the scene is happening again:



So today, I write the blog for my demanding little sister, run 35 mins through stormy weather at a decent speed, dye my hair, get into town to rig the lights for the surf band, and find an outfit as I've sadly left my Hawaiian shirt in a box in NZ, awaiting a decent shipping quote. Dammit.