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York Week 2

Yorkshire, home of the puddings...
Week Two

This week in numbers ...

Miles ran : 39.93
Wine drunk : 2 bottles of red and some Rosé
Beer drunk : 1 bottle
Times I was nearly run over : 1
Times I swore at old ladies : 1 (possibly 2)

Monday 8th July

Busy day working from 9am until 6:30pm with back to back massage clients, hardly even had time to stop and eat some mushrooms.

Yoghurt for breakfast, mushrooms and noodles for lunch, veggie chilli for tea and yes it was made with mushrooms. What you do is get one of those massive punnets of mushrooms from Aldi and blitz them in a food processor and use them instead of mince and add loads of spice and chilli and mushrooms soak it all up, best chilli you'll ever have.

Well actually my chilli is the best you'll ever have but i'm not inviting you for tea so you can't have mine.

No booze, no cake, no sweets, no chocolate.

Tuesday 9th July

Tuesdays always club session but tonight we are doing something new so me and G are doing our sessions during the day so we have an excuse to watch and heckle tonight.

Poured down all day and wasn't looking forward to it but headed out for 6 reps of the new and improved Sainsbury's with added hill.

Now running in the rain is never fun but running in the rain when you wear glasses is downright dangerous, the choice is wear the glasses and get a little vision through the rain covered lenses or ditch the glasses and run blind.

I went with running blind.

It was the wrong choice.

The route is very overgrown with trees and bushes, my plan was to shut my eyes and put my head down every time I got to an over hanging tree, run through it and then open my eyes. Now this works well as long as no other people are around, the floor in my plan was if someone else happened to be heading towards me whilst I was running head down and eyes shut.

This brings me to an apology to the old lady.

I apologise profusely to the little old lady that met me head on under the tree and I apologise even me for shouting 'oh fuck' right in her face and I also apologise for then jumping onto the grass, slipping and shouting 'mother fucking fucks' but I stress I shouted this at the grass not at the old lady.

She was most certainly not a 'mother fucking fuck'.

Home for some salad and a mushroom or two, some more work and then back to the club later.

Wednesday 10th July

Easy run day, along the coast to Cullercoats, loop round the fountain and back home.

An easily forgettable day and I can't actually remember anything else about it.

It probably ate some mushrooms and maybe Ben was involved but I can't remember. I wanted to put a photo of Ben here but couldn't be bothered to go onto Facebook to find one on his profile, so instead googled Ben Wilcox (with 1 L, that's how it's spelt Ben) and thought I'd choose the funniest looking Ben.

Turns out there are a lot of slightly odd looking Ben Wilcox's.

Thursday 11th July

Another threshold sessions today and got to get this one done early as busy day ahead.

Today's session is 10 x 1km at threshold pace with 2 min recoveries between each one, decided I need to drop the recovs to 1 minute as I dont have time to hang around and need to get home.

As usual I start at the Sandcastles and do 1km uphill to Cullercoats and then 1km downhill to Whitley, I'm a creature of habit and like running the same stretch of pavement over and over again and that's why Strava often emails me to say I've run a random 150m stretch 79 times in a week, that is until Wallis sneaks out and steals it from me.

Fucking Wallis (& Bilbo).

Home, shower, yoghurt, fruit and coffee and then off for Lily's graduation ceremony. Yeah I've got a child old enough to graduate, crazy. In my defence I was a teen bride and was forced to have children young, I'm only actually 35.

An excellent day and a proud moment, quite a few glasses of wine were drunk and then I was hungry and ate some veggie chilli loaded fries which were 640 calories so then I didn't eat for the rest of the day.

But I did have more lager.

And more red wine.

And rosé wine.

I didn't have any red in the house.

Friday 12th July

Easy miles with some hills. Another busy day and the only time I could fit this in was at 7am.

Now I don't do 7am, to be honest 8am is a push for me but I woke at about 6 and lay there for an hour arguing with myself about if I should or shouldn't go for a run, it was a well balanced argument with valid points from both sides. Enthusiastic Simon said it would be good, get it done early and not worry about it, it's an easy run and then you can get home and have some breakfast and it'll set me up well for the day.

Lazy Simon said fuck that, it's warm and cosy in bed.

I went for a run, it was windy and drizzly and I wished I was in bed.

Then home, shower and off to the RVI to have my usual check up for my dodgy eye. For those that don't know I have a shit left eye, had a virus in it back in 2020 which badly damaged my eye and that's why I always wear glasses and sunglasses to run, I basically can't see a bloody thing on my left hand side and I have a habit of running into signposts, lampposts, benches, statues, people, cars and old ladies (read above). No change with the eye which I guess is a good thing so back home for work.

Now a serious thing (and a plug for my business), I'm running around 35-45 miles a week these days and that'll increase with mara training so I'm making sure I get regular massage and today is massage day and my right hamstring, right hip and back are in desperate need of it. Foam rolling , stretching, massage guns are all good but not a patch on a proper massage.

So drop me a message and book in if you need one, you also get to listen to my music and no I don't take requests and I talk at you about running and music and politics and things and people that annoy me and you can quiz me on my mushroom diet and find out how many pairs of running shoes I own and if you're really lucky Murphy will headbut the door open and come in and lick you.

He's a dog by the way, not one of my kids.

Saturday 13th July

Parkrun day, I love parkrun and even more so now that Lily comes with me every Saturday to do it, now I just need to persuade the other two kids that getting up at 8:30 every Saturday and running 5km around the prom is a fun thing to do.

Had no plans here, just run as I feel. Started slow, even Lily was ahead of me until the skate park!

Then got on the prom and picked up the pace a bit, a nice run with a soundtrack today from The Smiths, don't often listen to Morrissey much these days, the Nigel Farage of the music world.

Whenever I think of Morrissey I'm reminded of Morrissey the consumer monkey on Vic & Bob and that reminds me of how much I love Bob Mortimer and that reminds me of a classic Bob Joke that always makes me laugh.

"I had the snip, whats it called, a vasectomy because I didn't want any kids but when I got home they were still there"

Sunday 14th July

Sunday is long run day and on the plan today was a 2 mile warm up followed by 10 miles at fast aerobic pace and then that's it.

Now next Sunday is 16 miles and due to life and busy plans getting in the way that won't be happening so this morning when I got up I decided to move things around and do 15-16 miles today at a steady pace, the plan was from mine to the Sandcastles, loop Spanish City and head on the usual route back past home and up Monkseaton Drive.

Headed down to the Sandcastles, was listening to Wild Flowers by Warmduscher which if you haven't heard you really must, it has some of the finest sweary lyrics you'll ever hear in a song. Anyway, I got sidetracked and next thing I knew was I was in Cullercoats which ruined my plan of heading back andy usual run route so I made a brilliant decision to run up and down the coast for 14 miles instead, this means up to Tynemouth and back twice and then up to Marconi Point and back and done.

Heading to Tynemouth was great, slightly uphill but the wind behind me. Turned at the Priory to head back and say Johnny and Jason and started heading back to Whitley, grim, grim and grim. A headwind the whole way back, battered and knackered by the time I got to Cullercoats and going 30 secs a mile slower, saw E team out running so pretended I was happy and smiling, I wasn't.

Anyway had to get it done, looped Spanish City and headed back along to Tynemouth, saw Johnny and Jason again, got to Tynemouth and turned to come back and the wind had picked up and was now regretting my life choices to do this route.

Coming back and nearly got wiped out by two pensioners on bikes who were coming through the very narrow gap no matter what, did a little leap sideways to avoid them as they weren't stopping and nearly wiped Helen L out who was running the other way, sorry Helen!

Not even The Sugababes could make this run enjoyable, got back to Spanish City and just couldn't face turning and going back to Cullercoats so I didn't. I went to co-op and got some raspberries instead and went home.

Rest day tomorrow.

Decided I'm going to go out for a run tomorrow, pissed off at myself for not doing the extra loop today so need to do a few Monday miles on tired legs to punish myself.

Bloody idiot.