Alles ist gut

The world seems to be getting back into some sort of order now. Kate has left The Apprentice (is she evil or what?) and I'm getting back to my running after the office move (am I a goody two shoes or what?). Did a lovely run round Wendover Woods with Phoebe dog on Monday evening. We went late and it was just us, apart from some wild animal making a right racket, in the woods. Meant to go out Wednesday but got stuck at work. Last night I took to the roads, apart from a detour hacking my way through the undergrowth because the aforementiond Crong hill was blocked off for roadworks, and did a rolling 20km run in around 90 mins. I'm finding the Chiltern hills to be too easy so I'm going to have to find another way to do my hill training. One idea doing the rounds in my head is to crank the treadmill up to 15% then committing to running 5 miles uphill at least once a week. Not quite the 12 miles uphill on the Jungfrau but it'll have to do for now.

I was in the local paper last night (local to my home town of Doncaster that is). Tony's wife Max had contacted them in response to an article on cancer. She told them about Tony and my Jungfrau run and the fact I was doing it in aid of Brain Tumour UK . Overall the article was pretty good and gave my sponsorship webpage address (no response yet though) but they named the wrong village that I grew up in. This was after detailed discussions about the right villge. Jounalists!

Just had a call in the middle of writing this from my old schoolmate Dave Harcombe who saw the article and is now sponsoring me. Cheers Dave.

Still no news from the cardiologists.

Onward and upward (my motto for the next three months).

Rain Man

I love running in the rain, which was just as well on Sunday as it peed it down all day. As much as I like the sun you just can't beat a good run in a downpour. One of my fondest running memories is running along a lane down which water six inches deep was flowing during a storm. It was just like being a kid again splashing along while laughing my head off. The passing motorists must have thought I was mad.

Anyway, yesterday I set off for a long(ish) road run with the intention to get in as many hills as I could. I went up Aston Hill (after which Aston Martins are named as Mr Martin used to trial his cars up the hill) and through Wendover Woods. I did go off road for a mile or so but it was a fairly good surface. I didn't even get my shiny new Asic Kayano's dirty. Then it was straight up The Hale and round back via The Crong (a lot of hill roads around us have names starting with 'The'. We also have TheTwist.) After the Hale all other 'hills' looked very flat and I even managed to accelerate up them which is unusually for me. In the end I did over 21km (bang on a half marathon) in a very comfortable 1h 45min which I'm more than happy with considering the hills. The rain kept me nice and cool but I was completely soaked when I got home and was banished to the utility room to strip off. Not a pretty sight.