Summer Running

I've been a bit lax since the half marathon, and my mileage has dropped right off. Joining Reading Roadrunners has made me realise just how much I need to do in order to meet my own targets. My weekly mileage is about half what it needs to be, and my weight is slowly, slowly creeping up.

I've got a 10k run this weekend, and I'm fairly certain I'm going to do badly, as my stamina has taken a real hit in the last couple of months. I'm slowly starting to build the distance back up again, and at some point in the near future I plan to add a second long run into my weekly schedule, probably at the weekend. I think both my weekly long runs need to be at least 10 miles in distance, however I'm not used to running in warm weather, and its a real struggle. On the plus side it does open up the river route in the evenings.



When I do my training runs I wear some Polar gear that measures heart rate, altitude and running speed. This in turn kicks out an interactive graph that lets me see how well I did or didn't do. Here is tonights, and it shows that I covered about 13k in an hour, and kept a fairly steady pace throughout. The heat really made it a struggle, and I've imbibed about 2 litres of liquid since then. Hopefully the pain now will translate into improved performance later on in the year...

Failure to Sunburn

Just had a great few days away in Jersey. We flew out on Thursday, and failed to die in a burning pool of oil (I'm not the greatest flyer in the world). As luck would have it this weekend was Jerseys "Liberation Day" celebrations, and our hotel was right in front of the square where all the celebrations were taking place. The Hotel (Pomme D'or) is actually featured in many of the photos of the event, and it looks like all the speeches etc. were done from the roof of its lobby.

I knew that the channel islands were occupied, however I didn't know that they had been under occupation for a year after France was liberated, or that they were basically turned into concentration camps, and forced labour ran the place. There was a display at the Hougue Bie (forever known as the Huge Bee), which was very stark and shocking, and really brought home what had been done on the islands during the war.

I won't go into all the stuff we did, the photos cover that far better... We were really lucky wit the weather, with just a small bit of rain on the Thursday evening, but other than that it was glorious sunshine, and it was only generous applications of factor 30 (sunblock by Dulux) that kept me from burning to a crisp. Its a lovely place, with a strange mix of English, French and Mediterranean styles. There are no big roads, and everything goes at a fairly leisurely pace. High points were;

• Mont Orguiel Castle - very well displayed, and a real warren of a place
  
• Durrell Wildlife Park - AKA the zoo. Gorillas and monkeys all over
  
• The hotel - really nice place, and got us into a room at 9am, which was much needed
  

Some letdowns;

• Elizabeth Castle - Compared to the Mont very basic, and not really done to its best
  

Can't really think of any others really...pretty good sign over all!

Early Morning Insanity

We're off to Jersey tomorrow morning...early tomorrow morning. _Very_ early. The taxi is picking us up at 5am, and as far as I can work out we'll be there before 9...

Fingers crossed that I manage to get some sleep, or I'll be a useless liability at the airport, and I'm not the greatest around planes anyway. Once we are there it should be a good laugh however...we are there for 3 nights, and the weather is finally starting to have a summer-theme to it. This will have been the first proper holiday I've had for a long time, and the first one with Gill as well... I'm quite looking forward to just kicking back and relaxing a bit.

In other things, my motorbike Matilda has been sorted out for summer, with a new chain, clutch cable and working rear brake (oops). The last few days have been good, and I've had the chance to just enjoy screaming round on her again. Really need to give her a clean though, shes a dirty little minx right now. I also need to get to work on the house, and finish off the sections I've started. Really need to sort out that leaking roof as well...

...however right now I should be getting back to work. Expect photos over the weekend (yes, I'm sad, and am taking my laptop).