unironedman

I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t really like the Black Eyed Peas. But the tune drifted into my head as I pondered this afternoon’s blog, so there we have it. This week has been mostly… running. I signed up for a two week challenge in aid of the local GAA club. Just run as much as you can. For two weeks. The 20 quid fee has already been paid, and you will get your T shirt, regardless, but proof positive that I was dropped on my head as a child: I’ve decided to run every day for the two week challenge, and do a minimum of 10k per day. The challenge started last Sunday, on Valentine’s Day.

Ever the over-achiever, this has resulted in runs of 23k, 12.5k, 10k, 11k, 10.5k, 11k and today’s run of 22k. I’ll plod along for the next week with more runs of around 10k plus, and then finish up next Saturday with another half or thereabouts. I was going to say ‘look, at least it’s keeping me off the streets’ but you know what I mean.

This morning’s run was one of those early morning gigs where you arise at 7am and set off like a great explorer of old. Perhaps I shouldn’t have left my 11k run ’til quite so late the night before. The legs didn’t know what hit them. The problem with running every day is, well, just that: running every day. There’s no let up. No rest periods. The three mornings a week of self-exile in the shed doing a few resistance exercises seems to be paying off. Despite the beating handed out to the feet (yes, that does sound a little odd), they are holding up for now.

Just to confuse both myself and my legs, we did a did mixed up variation of many common routes, but in reverse. Where the plan fell down was when we hit the canal towpath, and it was just too miserable to try and run. Mostly it was just semi-controlled sliding. My plan to head up to Maynooth was stymied after a few hundred yards and I doubled-back towards the park. The watch was telling me I was a little short of my target, so with less than a kilometre from home, I took a left in the park and detoured around by Weston Aerdrome for a few more ks and general shits and giggles.

The one good result of all that slogging around was that I ended up popping out at the Salmon Leap Inn. Obviously all pubs are closed at the minute, but the owner has revamped an old double-decker bus into an outdoor takeaway for coffee, rolls and soup. It’s been doing a great trade. With my house literally around the corner, I felt I had earned a breakfast roll. With two hot chocolates to boot, I as I teetered down the lane, the watch ticked over the 22k mark. I was more than happy to call it quits. With half a breakfast roll in the belly (my son had the other half), I sank into a hot bath.

The brand new runners were given a little scrub too, before I drained the water away. Waste not, etc.

In other news, well, it’s just more of the same really. We’re still stuck with an absolute shower of donkeys in government, so we are lurching from one Covid-related crisis to the next. The virus doesn’t give a stuff. It’s not sentient. Though you might level that argument against some of those in power right now too. But the virus is terribly good at adapting to our uselessness, and mutates at regular intervals. It is our collective lethargy that is allowing these mutations. And each mutation tends to make the damn thing harder to treat.

Many sectors have been badly hit and the one that has been silently wiped out without much thought is the artistic community (which is a broad enough and quite nebulous thing). But this piece of work caught my eye on Twitter this week, so I thought I might share:

It tickled my fancy! Thank you, Dodd, whoever you are.

And so, dear reader, I leave you with a picture of Bonnie. Greyhounds are built for speed. They are the ultimate running machines, capable of amazing speeds. If you want to see one in slo-mo, the BBC have you covered. It is quite the mystery how they sleep so much.