Juneathon Day 2

Ran the Egg and Spoon race and the Balloon-between-the-knees race at the Jubilee street patry in my road yesterday. I won the egg and spoon and got a curly-wurly :)

Logged!

Juneathon Day 1

So here we go, Juneathon is here and I can see a dozen things this month that will keep me from completing it. Not least this weekend (I mean really, couldn't we have delayed it a few days?). Today is done and dusted already thank goodness. Oh how I loathe running before 9am. It was so HOT! I was slow. But I ran. My thighs are still achey from double speedwork with running club earlier in the week.

I did just under 2 miles in just under 20 minutes. I recorded it on RunKeeper and on RunningFree so you can check I'm not telling porkies.

Tomorrow I'm going orbing then we have two parties so I guess I'll have to slip out for a run at lunchtime or do some Davina DVD. What am I DOING?! Stupid Juneathon.

Great London Swim

Hi reader! I'm bringing this blog back from the dead for at least a short while as I'm going to be trying to take part in Juneathon 2012 (see the badge over there?). But I've got quite a lot of other active news to share as well so I'll be posting about a few things I *have* done to get back into the rhythm of things.

First up is the Great London Swim. I am not a swimmer. I like swimming. I just don't do it very much. I'm pretty hopeless at front crawl, I've never done open water swimming (I don't count bobbing about in the sea when bodyboarding) and I hate the post-swim pfaffing. I'm not *entirely* sure why I entered this event but I really really enjoyed it. The event is a one mile swim in the Thames in Royal Victoria Docks. I don't think I've ever swum a mile before but I felt confident when I worked out that it was about 64 lengths of my local pool. So I printed out a training plan, followed three sessions, swam a mile in the pool, and sort of stopped training.

Turns out that was enough. I don't advocate the method but I didn't drown and I on the day I swam faster than I had in the pool so WIN!

Looking sexy... no?

I though the event itself was exceptionally well organised. I was in the third wave at 10am. There were waves of about 250 people every half hour from 9am to 3:30pm. Each wave had a different colour cap and an allocated time to check in and go through acclimatisation and warm up. I'm used to things being a little laid back at running races so I almost missed check in. That said all other aspects were very relaxed. There were people with goals and people who were happy to get round with a friend whilst having a bit of a natter en route. It didn't feel crowded, I didn't get kicked in the face or swum over at the start as I could hang back a little and there were loads of kayakers acting as marshalls all the way round who were very friendly and up for a chat.

I finished in 51:36, which I was VERY happy with. My mum and dad came to support me so I got some cool photos. It took me a while to get my land legs back!

The goody bag was pretty good too and the chappy in charge of giving them out was doing a great job of "selling" them. A t-shirt, flip-flops *and* a medal as well as snacks and drinks. My favourite item were the pistachios...

I really couldn't get over how friendly and lovely everyone was. I had a fantastic morning and I reckon I'll be doing it again next year, if not another open water event.

September

School starts
Early sunsets
Picking berries
Trees transforming
Eerie mists
Migrating birds
Bonfires burning
Evenings snuggling
Rustling leaves

Danny MacAskill - Industrial Revolutions

I will never, ever get tired of watching this guy. I love the music too. Ben Howard - The Wolves.

I Run

Very much enjoyed this video. You may recognise the guy from the cycling video I posted recently...

Bike Lanes

This video is a truly brilliant response to attitudes to cyclists in some parts of the world.