Mile reps

I say "mile" as I don't think anyone has accurately measured our mile course. Still, it's a good opportunity to measure performance and see how much I've slowed down. ;-) I wasn't expecting great things after my somewhat irregular training of late and my dickey back but things weren't as bad as I feared.

I was happy enough with a 6:14, a 6:09 and a 6:12. Certainly not as fast as I was earlier this year but perhaps more encouragingly, only a couple of seconds slower than I was this time last November when I was running more mileage.

My final interview for the Coast Guard job is this Friday but meanwhile, I've got a training session to go along to tonight on the Ballast Bank in Troon. If you see a bunch of nutters wearing helmets and head-torches tonight playing about with ropes, that'll be us. ;-)

Still improving & new job

At the weekend I ran in the Kilmarnock XC race, dragging my butt around in 40 something minutes. The time is pretty immaterial when it comes to XC, it's all about showing solidarity and freezing your arse off with everyone else from your club. ;-)

It's a good sticky & hilly course (one of the best local ones) and most importantly of all, didn't seem to bother my ankle & back. The ankle seems absolutely fine now and the back doesn't seem to affect my running too much.

Last night was our club's "hills" session. As I've probably mentioned before, the "hills" are actually just the bridges that cross the railway line in Troon - mostly no more than about 30 seconds sprinting each. Still, I love them to bits and I find it hard to understand anyone who *doesn't* love hill sprints.

What's not to like about that feeling of acceleration and speed, rising up on the toes, working your legs and arms faster and harder with every step until you reach the top of the hill? Of course it probably helps that I'm usually the first one to the top of the hill. ;-) I'm way too competitive for my own good sometime.

The new job is, I think, 90% definite. There was a feature in our local paper recently about the Coastguards looking for new volunteers. Well, I've always fancied guarding our coast and considering that no one has tried to attack it in all the time we've lived in Ayr, I reckon it must be a pretty cushy job. ;-)

I went along for an interviewette last week with about 25 other people and got a call at the weekend to say that I was one of the three people they were wanting. It seems there's another interview to go but given that they've shortlisted 3 people for three jobs it seems the last one must be a formality. Anyway, I'm going along tonight to get measured up for uniform & survival suit so I reckon it must be pretty certain.

The job is paid actually but as the Queen is only gracious enough to pay coastguards for 2 hours a month (for official training) + call outs, they don't make a big fuss over the pay. Just as well I'm not doing it for the money.

It seems that the major part of the job is conducting searches (missing persons, washed up ordinance etc.) with the very occasional cliff rescue thrown in for good measure. Apparently we don't get to keep the ordinance though. :-( A less attractive side of the job is recovering bodies from beaches & rivers.

Still, it'll get me out of the house more and combines my love of the seashore with a useful social service.

Really looking forward to my first run back on the WHW on the 30th. It seems like forever since I last ran on it and I'm just itching to get going. Lets just hope I can contain my enthusiasm/competitiveness enough to avoid another injury.

Making progress

Today, I managed to put my knickers on without dropping them to the floor. Woo hoo! You see, ever since I spent an afternoon crawling around my loft fitting insulation and emptying the loft of loose breeze blocks, my back has been giving me a lot of grief. For the last two weeks I've either had to sit down to get dressed or step into one leg hole, drop my knickers to the floor, step *into* the other leg hole and then somehow stoop to pull them up. So doing it without going through this palaver is definite progress.

My foot, or rather my left ankle, seems fine now. I've not risked road running on it (apart from a few miles to do the timing for our club 5K the other night) but it seems just fine. My memories of my last stress fracture mean that I'm not about to assume that everything really *is* fine until it's been pain free for a week or two more. I've withdrawn from the "Run with the Wind" race in Strathaven which is a disappointment as it's a great 10K but it is predominantly downhill and all on tarmac and I really do think I'd be foolish to race it.

Still, I'm enjoying the running I am doing at the moment and am looking forward to the first training run on the WHW at the end of this month. Today's run was especially rewarding as I was running along part of the river Ayr way and as anyone who has ever run with me along there will confirm, I'm *always* looking for Kingfishers. Well today that vigilance paid off as an electric blue blur of wings skimmed down the river next to me, thumbing it's nose to the convention of drabness that seems to define so many British birds.

In a way I'm almost glad the all the other British birds are so drab as it heightens the pleasure of spotting such an outrageously colourful bird.