Running Diary

Just because I haven't made recent entries doesn't mean I haven't been out, honest!

Thirty minutes each on Wednesday and Friday. Friday's run was deferred until later in the morning because I had an early business meeting. On the bus into town, a lady I didn't think I knew asked me if I wasn't going form my morning run. Word must be getting round the island about the nutter in the green and blue running vest who goes out in the morning.

My midweek runs are following the same route every day, although I'm ready to change this if it becomes a chore. Walney is hardly Alpine but it is undulating (rather saucer-shaped in the middle, actually, like a cake that was taken out of the oven too early) and it's hard to find a flat route, which means that there is inevitably some testing uphill stuff somewhere along the way. In particular on my route there's a longish drag up Ocean Road between the marshes and the school. What's nice is that I'm taking this comfortably now in a way I never could take hills in Reading. (It helps, of course, that I usually do this bit with a stiff wind at my back!)

I run by time, not by distance, so by running the same route I can tell I'm getting faster. Where my early 30-minute excursions ended at the second crossing of Ocean Road, last week I was making it to Dominion Street (streets laid out in a grid make a fine measuring device). Wednesday I was at the bottom of my own back street and yesterday I made up the back street (and I do mean up!) almost to my own gate.

The other think I noticed yesterday was that my breathing was very well-controlled, but I was feeling it in the back of my calves in a way I hadn't before. And this morning I'm really stiff and achy. Perhaps it was skipping up that long hill that did it!

That's more like it

This is the Barrow I remember from childhood; the Barrow we know and love!

Even if the bus no longer goes to Rainey Park.

Chuffing rain - hasn't stopped all day...

Bigots' Corner

For those who have missed it, there is a storm in a teacup in the UK over the case of nine Glasgow firefighters disciplined for refusing to hand out fire prevention leaflets at the Pride Scotia event.

Now, firefighters aren't exactly noted for their towering intellects but they ought to have been aware of the crassness of their rather insulting behaviour. My own view is that in being required to attend diversity training, and in one case being demoted, they got off very lightly. They should have been sacked. Bigotry has no place in a civilised society.

What's worse, though, is the queue of pundits lining up to support them, including the Archbishop of Glasgow, Mario Conti (good Scots name that! Surely not a Vatican plant?). As various religious groups sound off their venom, frankly it's time we stopped paying any attention to them.