Chasing Bartleby

Oxford Town and Gown Race Report

50:20

That's the time on my Garmin, the chip time will follow in the coming week. That time is ~5 odd minutes better than my last 10K race which was 6 weeks ago. It would have been nice to break 50 minutes, but I'm not too bothered as I ran as fast as I could given the packed conditions. The route took us around the narrow streets of Oxford, and there was many a period in the race when I just had to coast behind a glut of runners since there was no room for overtaking.

The heavens opened up as we sped away from the start, but that was fine because it's pretty fun gliding over cobbles in your Vibrams and splashing in puddles. The route was a twisty course that weaved around and about the centre of Oxford, so there were plenty of old buildings and statues and the like to see as I hunkered on by.

The rain let up and the sun came out on the latter half of the race which was nice. The final 3 klicks wound through some college's meadows, which led to mud-splashing fun and the back of my legs and the seat of my shorts were caked in the yellow-brown muck by the end. Glorious.

The marshals and crowds were pretty vocal in their support, with plenty of clapping and bread-chucking. The race was well organised and I'll definitely run it again next year. Gonna break 40 minutes for sure.

Corned Beef Stovie Recipe

Find below my mum's recipe for corned beef stovies: it's hard to get this one wrong and is a grand winter treat after a longish run. Aye, I know it's spring, but this grub is too good to restrict to just one season a year.

Ingredients:

• 2 large onions
• 3 large potatoes
• 1 small container (a teacup) of roast beef dripping (either your own or bought from your local butcher.)
• 1 tin of corned beef.

Recipe

• Melt the dripping, enough to cover the bottom of the pot.
• Chop the onions (not too finely) and add to the runny hot dripping in the pot. Be careful not to brown the onions: you just want them to be soft.
• Peel the potatoes and cut them into nice big chunks (1/8ths)
• Rinse the potatoes under cold water - do not dry the potatoes - and add to the soft onions in the pot.
• Stir the mixture together and then cook very slowly with a lid on the pot.
• You will know when the potatoes are ready by testing them with a knife: push your knife into the centre of one of the potatoes. Pull the knife out of the water with the potatoe hanging off the blade and the potatoe should gently slide off the knife back into the pot if it is cooked.
• Don't worry if the potatoes stick to the bottom of the pot: mine always do. Just don't scrape the pot when stirring otherwise you get not-very-appealing potatoe-gunk in your stovies.
• When cooked, stir in the corned beef for a minute or two and then serve.

Arthur might've had his chips, but some stovies'd've seen him right.

Fastest in my Vibrams

Here's a snap of my Vibram Five Fingers-shod feet standing in cool mud in the Titchfield Nature Reserve.

Splashing through mud and dragging your feet up from squelchy sticky mud while beasting yourself is crapola for setting times, but fineola for just having a blast while running.

Running With Audio Books

My bro gifted me an iPod Shuffle late last year, and I've been loading audio books onto it to listen to while out running.

Librivox is a free source of audio books that are in the public domain (texts that are out of copyright). All manner of classics are available in the back catalogue, and more books are being added all the time. The unexpurgated texts are read plainly but competently by volunteers, and listening to these tales is a great way to while away the time on the longer runs that I am doing these days.

I have just finished listening to a very-easy-on-the-ears reading of Rafael Sabatini's classic tale of duelling, romance, and theatre set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, "Scaramouche". (Also a slight but nevertheless fun film.) The reader, Gordon Mackenzie, has a very pleasant reading voice that is well paced, and he often hits the right tone to convey the character of the various folks in the story: Mackenzie's reading really does give added oiliness to Monsieur Binet. (Mr Mackenzie isn't quite as well-spoken as Tom Kemp, but then really, who is?)

"Walden" is up next, followed I think by the pulp tales of Barsoom, starting with "A Princess of Mars".

Eastleigh 10 Race Report

I set a new personal worst! 55:53 Haha!

That's the first time I've run the 10K distance since just before surgery last year. That's roughly 8 months ago. I'm not unhappy with the resulting time... in truth, I took it easy, keeping a slow and steady pace the whole way around the race course. I started right from the back and just ran my own race. I felt comfortable the whole way around, and I didn't feel beasted at the end.

The Eastleigh course itself was only okay. It was suburbs the whole way with a B&Q store and an overhead bridge being the only landmarks. The "hill" at the 3rd klick wasn't so much a hill as a gentle incline so I don't really know what race reports of earlier years were on about when they mentioned it. I'm moving to Oxford shortly and I won't be back for next years race because there wasn't anything hugely compelling about it. It was very well organised though, and there was a slice of home made fruit cake at the end which was a nice English touch.

I spotted my first "walker" at 1.7 klicks in. I ran steadily for the entire duration of the race. I was wearing my Vibram Five Finger Flows and didn't really experience any discomfort at all, although my left foot fell asleep at the 8K mark, which I think was down to me fastening the strap too tightly.

I'm running 5 times a week now: after months of inactivity due to first the surgery and then an annoying lack of motivation, training for this race was fun. I'm slowly gonna bump up my distance during these runs from 7K to 10K over the next month. I'm aiming to run another 10K race two months from now and significantly improve on that time... I just need to find a suitable race.

Happy days!

An engaging talk about creativity and education.

I'm reading a similarly engaging book right now: Gödel, Escher, Bach. I'm only a wee bit in, but I can't put it down. I'm pretty strapped for time these days, but my spare moments are GEBGEBGEB. The exploration of ideas as A Thing To Do seems like The Thing To Do. Being a salaryman is by contrast rather... fegh

Eastleigh 10K Bah!

Right, the Eastleigh 10K is on.

I'm finding it hard to get into the rhythm of running again. The surgery of last year was... well, it was last blooming year already! I'm amazed and annoyed at myself for still using the surgery as some kind of excuse to myself not to start 'just yet'. Bah!

So I've entered the Eastleigh 10K. Well, I've only just printed the form off, but I'll use the motivation of posting it to get me out the door on Monday. Yeah, my motivation is that bad... I need reasons to go out running. Bah!

The race is on for the end of March. I want to finish it in under 55 minutes. Sigh. Yeah, I'm in much the same boat as I was 2 years ago when I ran my first 10K in Manchester. It's annoying to have to start again, but start again I must. Bah!

On a happier note - not a bah! in sight - I'm running along nicely in the Vibram Five Fingers. I got taken ill last year a few weeks after getting them so I wasn't able to really give 'em a proper good going. I'll be running the 10K in 'em.

Comrades 2010

I'm aiming to run the 2010 Comrades: 2010 is also World Cup year in South Africa, which has engendered some changes to the Comrades.

"The organisers are expecting Comrades 2010 to be very popular (as it is world cup year), and have made some changes, for a start off they have changed it to a down hill run, they are limiting the race to 20,000  AND more importantly for novices the first 15,000 places are reserved for those who have ran it before. In effect you (and myself) won't be able to enter until November 09 at earliest , previous entrants can apply Sep- Nov. You can still use a qualifying time from 24/25th May 09 onwards though, which all means there might be a scramble for places (if there are any left...)"

Mmm, so I might not get a place... best to anticipate the worst. If I don't get a place, I'll have to find another like marathon - closer to home I reckon - to aim for in 2010. In other news, happily for him, and sadly for me, my brother will be posted in some far flung warzone come the 2010 Comrades, so he ain't going to running the Valley of a Thousand Hills with me.

First Proper Run Since Surgery

Only four kilometres, but I was running as opposed to jogging. I haven't physically run for five months now, and it felt most excellent to be puffpuffpuffing away again.

No twinges from the wound, so happy days are here again! I'll crank the route up to a full 5 kilometres for the rest of the week, then gradually increase the distance in the new year.

Goals for 2009

It's New Year soon, so here is what I want to accomplish in 2009. (Many of these really should include the text 'at least...')

• Run 5 marathons; all UK-based ones, and they don't all have to be official races
• Write a short story about Abelard and get it published: genre is fine, small press is not;
• Write 4 technical articles; (agile, test, grid, and toc-in-software-engineering)
• Row a good stretch of the Thames while in Oxford; (a _bitching_ stretch)
• Engage in political activism instead of just reading about it;
• Ride (on a bicycle) a good stretch of the Thames while in Oxford; (a _bitching_ stretch)
• Deliver 3 technical talks; (agile, grid, and toc-in-software-engineering)
• Foster a spirit of "Bring the Cool" at work; important to get this one right
• Attend 2 lectures on stuff I normally wouldn't be interested in at Treadwells; and
• Play Mornington Crescent.

Having composed the above list, I am struck by the rather solitary nature of it. (And having realised that, I don't really feel any desire to change it to encompass relationships. Ho hum.)