Brathay at Work
- Duncan
- 6 hours ago
- 4 min read
Paddington at Work
Interior decorators available. Specialist contractors for pain caves, difficult domiciles, or just awkward situations. The colour palette can be a soul sucking black, pale, anaemic, bland yellow or a kaleidoscope of exotic colours so vivid, so varied that to try to pcik just one affords for confusion, discord and unpleasantness. It's easy to take for granted that just because you get to the start line, the finish is possible. Strength, conditioning, mobility and months upon months of training help, without question, the more and better you prepare the more likely you are to finish, but and this is a massive but, anything can happen. The human body whilst an amazing feat of engineering is being pushed way beyond what us normal people can do. We're limited by the demands of work, family life, our own motivation. There is no magic formula, every single person is different. I take my hat off to Katie, Rob, Izzy, Dr David, Kevin, Ashleigh, Bassit, Matt and Gary. Each and all are consistently grinding out phenomenal performances, some are getting stronger it would seem. Even then, there will be moments (I have no doubt) when they visit their own dark place. A few of us have tweaks, injuries, uncomfortable aches and pains, but 15 out, and 15 back in today, ready to take on Day 8 tomorrow. It's close but still 78.6 miles to go.
Quote of the day, 'Day 7 kicked the shit out of me', thanks Susie. It pretty much took a chunk out of everyone today.
We were reminded that it might be a humdinger of a day with our own 'Ring Card Girl'. Please look away now, what you see next, cannot be unseen. I was looking for blunt implements with which to scoop out my eyes.
John was embracing his inner 'Paddington' by preparing marmalade sandwiches for a snack half way round, luckily he's not running with a big floppy red hat, otherwise I would have got worried.
This event brings out the best in you; your kindness, your determination, even your sense of humour. For those people kind and generous enough to donate to our JustGiving pages or to the charity directly, I hope it gives them something too?
For a while today, I was 'lucky' enough to trundle along with Johnny and Stuart. Until Stuart abandoned us. It may have been that he needed a quick stop to drop some things off? During our tour towards Lakeside, we were treated to a certain Scotsman's repertoire of inappropriate jokes, hilarious, totally un pc but funny. Why do jokes always sound better in an accent, especially Scottish?
I'm a bloody idiot too, didn't press 'start' on Garmin until about 4 or 5 miles in. 'If it's not on Strava, it didn't happen', some runners are such idiots. In fact, I class myself amongst them, after all why am I tracking my 'performance', I've genuinely no need to. All I need to do is complete the same course, it's 26.2 miles every day for 10 days. In the grand scheme of things, just so long as I get round, that's all I care about, to accomplish something I set out to do. To demonstrate it is possible. To raise money for a worthwhile charity.
Tomorrow may well be another awkward day, about 14 or 15 miles in, I felt my lower right hamstring tweak. It seems okay but the outlook when things are starting to go wrong do not look not pretty. When you're out there and protecting yourself, just trying to get round, you find yourself saying things like, 'come on, just get to the next box', or 'let's just get the next mile out the way'. You find yourself urging yourself on, which is futile really as you can't physically go any bloody faster. Maybe it's not the injury that scuppers you but the frustration?
I'm on my soapbox today. Found it really difficult to write last night, and must have fallen asleep about 10:30. That's a good thing, sleep has been hard to come by. Part the way round, I got to thinking about marriage. What makes a good marriage? One bit of advice was 'I do my thing, she does hers' another 'shared interests'. A very wise person then said, you should get yourself someone, a soul mate? I think they're a bit hard to come by? Well then get yourself a 'twinky'. It got me to thinking about the bit of crumpet I saw on the lakeshore near Ambleside today...
Finish line ditty was 'The Giver' another Chappell Roan song, simply because it contained the line, 'I get the job done'. Hope I've not spoken too soon as funnily enough I've got to do another little lap of the lake again today.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIR DAVID
Hope he gets more than a mouseful of cake for his birthday. Sorry, best I could do at short notice. Groan!
DJ Théo's tune of today...
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