Basura

Let me start with an apology, an important statement, and then a review of how rubbish things are going right now.

OK, first up, I'm sorry I haven't been posting. This is also a reflection on how rubbish things have been.

Second, an important statement: I haven't run the race yet. I'm concerned about this - several people have congratulated me. It seems there is an element of confusion about the 10km race. That was a race. It wasn't the race. It was shorter, and (supposedly) faster. I have yet to run the magical 13.1 miles. The most I've done, at a slow jog, was 8.8.

And now let's review the progress I've failed to make over the last week. I left you in Ely, a week ago Sunday, when I was on my way back from a fine trip out, although sadly, not a practice half-marathon. I would feel so much happier if I had run that. I can't begin to tell you. Oh wait, yes I can...

I came home, and started writing the paper I had to give the next day. This took a great deal of time. At about 10, I realised that I hadn't done a 45 minute jog, and I hadn't delivered scripts of the Crucible to Peter and Mary. Ideally, I would have happily combined these two chores, bar for the fact that I also hadn't finished writing my paper. I got on the bike, and cycled across town to drop off the scripts. I returned, ate, and carried on tapping away at the computer. (It was, at least, a modicum of exercise?) I finished at 1am, and realised that the house was a horror, and that my neighbour was going to have access to feed Frank. I did the washing up. I attempted to pack, and then went to bed at 2am.

On Monday, at 6am, I got up, threw stuff at the suitcase and left, where I was early for my train, by a full 4 minutes. (It would have been 8, but I thought the train was at 6:46, not 6:42). We staggered to Sheffield, burdened by the entirely unnecessary things I'd put into my case, and arrived at the conference comfortably early. The conference was great. My paper turned out to be too long, owing to an odd change in the length of sessions from 15 minutes plus 5 minutes questions, to 12 minutes plus 3 minutes questions. Needless to say, there wasn't a great deal of time for questions... some things can work to your advantage. I shan't bore you with the details, but a highlight was Bill Sutherland's "Year in the Life of an Ecologist (a personal perspective). He said that he is often struck by how people gather at conferences, and become so immersed in their own research world, that they totally fail to discuss any of the major ecological issues that are going on. It was a well-made point, and a great romp through the year. It even mentioned RSPB Dave's reserve! How's that for thorough? (Although not RSPB Dave. That would have been slightly weird).

I also hung out with Juliette for a lot of the conference, which made me feel very important - for anyone who graduated with me, that Juliette, our young zoology lecturer who every male undergraduate drooled over... who now (also) works for RSPB. (And people still drool over her). I ascertained (terrifyingly) that she is a triathlete of some standing, nationally, so I pretended to know a lot about training, so we had some shared ground. She demanded to know how old this famous/infamous hard trainer of mine was, and I hazarded a guess that Sal was in her early 40s. Juliette's entire demeanor relaxed (she is also bordering on terrifying), as she said that Sal was not in her age group. She explained that she is a little competitive, and if Sal were in her age group, she'd probably know her. I later found out from running Dave that Sal is actually in her age group. I hate to admit it, but if I were Sal, I'd be slightly concerned. Of course, that's because I'm not as terrifying as Sal is, but I wouldn't want to see them meet, to be honest. Although us being girls, they'd probably be all honey and laughter (with subtle undercurrents of hatred).

Well my training routine was postponed until Wednesday, owing to the hills, when I was due to be doing a fifty minute run. I had to get this in before pint of poetry, so I asked Maggie if she could give me a lift, which she kindly agreed to do, and I set out to do a circuit of town, deeming the river edge paths to be too dimly lit for an after-dark run. What I did find out was that running on a Wednesday around New England is a poor choice, Thursdays must be bin day, further north of me, because all the wheelies were out. It stank. Language is funny, isn't it? The word basura popped into my head, which is (possibly) the spanish for rubbish. I think it is rather apt, because it is a long "u", so it goes bas-urgh-ra. Which is just what my brain was thinking. It was perfectly manageable. I nipped off to Pint of Poetry, where I read out Marcus Brigstock's hilarious poem from late 2009, during the Climate conference in Copenhagen, which was called Dr Seuss at Copenhagen - largely inspired by Bill Sutherland's talk, in fact.

Sal messaged me on Thursday morning to say "rest or swim", and after three days of conference, I decided (perhaps foolishly, the way things turned out) to rest. However, I didn't have my swim things with me at work. She then messaged me (let me just say this now, at 00:38 on Friday morning: this is why she doesn't really have a leg to stand on telling me to go to bed early. On the other hand, she isn't training for a race in 3 weeks time... so maybe she still has both). The message went thus:

"So, tomorrow (Friday) do a 50 min fartlek run with 6 to 8 burts of faster running of between 90 secs and 4 mins. If it's 90 secs run hurtily fast, if 4 mins run uncomfortably but sustainably fast. It can be anywhere between those times but do mix up the intervals, i.e. don't do all the same.

Rest on Saturday (or bike ride for 60-90 mins)

On Sunday do 1hr 45mins of steady running. Be really great if you could do it on a hilly route out this way but would mean getting the bus over :) Maybe not then"

I can't remember why I didn't do the fartlek run on Friday, but I think that meetings overran, and I just didn't have a lunchbreak left. On Friday evening, I had some theatre-work to do: although I did cycle up to Eye Road to pick up some props for Saturday. Then I spent the evening planning a workshop for Saturday around The Crucible, which I was directing for a "rehearsed play reading" on Saturday evening. I cannot tell you how worried I was about this: (1) it's my favourite play, and I didn't want to mess it up; (2) I've never ran a workshop before, and (3) I was feeling, mainly because it was true, a certain lack of organisation and efficiency, and was desperately worried that my cast would pick up on this - because one of the reasons for doing it was to convince my theatre group that I can take on directing. So I could have got the missed session in on Saturday morning, but I didn't want to do the two training courses on consecutive days, because of the lack of recovery time; and I didn't want to get any more stressed than I already was. On the plus side, I did get an early night. In hindsight, though, another mistake.

So The Crucible went well - really well, considering the pre-planning that had gone into it, which mainly consisted of nightmares. One of my lead characters had rang me on Thursday to say she had bronchitis, and I ended up **ahem**, selflessly stepping into the role myself. Yes, it's my favourite part. What?

On Sunday, I had plans to do my 1hr 45 minute run in the afternoon, when Summer could join me. This meant that I could also have a (in my opinion) deserved lie in, listen to the Archers with a cup of tea, maybe a refill. I also hit the echinacea and orange juice first thing, because the shadow of a hint of a cold that had been growing all week manifested itself on Sunday morning, but I (vainly) hoped that it might be caused by a dry throat and the echinacea might sort the rest out. I did manage to achieve at least a cup of tea, before things went wrong. It was a rumbly tummy that alerted me to further problems. Turned out they were cataclysmic. Running, I did, all morning, but not outside. I emailed Sal, to tell her I not only had a chesty cough, but also "the runs", which, let me tell you, is not a winning combination. She messaged right back "My god, you've broken!" I think the surprise was that she was clearly blameless.

This was disastrous. Totally, utterly, rubbish.