Friday, February 26, 2010

One for the money, two for the show. three to get ready, let's go, go, go...

I'm off, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, ta ta for now. At silly o'clock in the morning I leave for a week of skiing with my friends which WILL be accident free and a fantastic time. We are going to La Plagne in France and the weather looks good for us at the moment. I have a spare few moments while the washing machine is on so I'm taking this moment to say that I will probably be going dark for the week. Not that I don;t want to brag and blog about how great my holiday is but I sent an email to our hotel and the Wi-Fi costs are crazy expensive.

Today has been a general mad rush to get things done before the morning and I had some interesting moments with work as our Internet Host decided to relocate our server last night and this morning our online payments weren't working. Some very tense phone calls in which I said all the usual stupid stuff you say to a support helpline like 'This is really important and urgent' like I would be calling and suffering the support charges if it wasn't. All sorted now though and even cleared a few outstanding jobs this afternoon too, so I can go on holiday with a clear conscience.

To treat myself for all my hard work I decided that I really needed to get in one last long run before the holiday and I begin my taper for the LA Marathon on my return. As the wind was howling I took the highly unusual decision to run on a treadmill, I know, you're shocked, but still. Having no car and missing the bus by a few lousy seconds I walked the couple of miles to the gym (honestly, no more complaining about the one in my apartment building).

My fear from yesterday was realised as I started off on the mill as the ambient room temperature was just as high and humid and with in the first few miles I was soaked and to be slightly indelicate, even having lubed my nipples they were already chaffing on my soaked singlet. I had to use every mental trick in the book to get anywhere near completing today's run. It was just a plain slog. I ticked off 5k then 10k then counted down until I had been running an hour, working in both km and miles to what ever provided the most interesting target at the time and then converting it in my head anyway to take my mind of the puddle I had become.

One ting that did work quite well was when Countdown came on. For those who are unaware of this afternoon British institution, a very quick description would be a quiz show where contestant pick 9 letters, choosing from either vowels or constants and then have 30 seconds to make the longest word they can. Everyone who watches it secretly want the god of chance to spell out a naughty word as the letters are chosen. there is also a number game as well to keep the math head people happy. Since I have left they have retooled the show as the Americans call it and I have to say Carol Vorderman's replacement is non to shabby. That took my mind of the run for a while.

Anyway, the target had been for a 22 mile run, all I could coax out of my body was 20 but to be honest given everything I'll happily take it.

After the gym I headed off to a local pub where I meet up with some good friends and had a good meal and drink while catching up with all the goings on. I even learnt about a chap in the bars girlfriend called Angela who is was being extremely vocal about.

Now I'm home and need to get my stuff stowed away for tomorrow, with only my skis and poles packed I really should get a move on but packing has always been a bit of an issue for me, hence the distraction of doing the blog to put off the inevitable.

I do hope to get on-line at some point during the week and catch you up on my goings on and to report no serious injuries but if not a week Saturday is when I'll be back blogging again.

As always, thanks for reading.

No comments:

Post a Comment