Other stuff.

Well, apart from my running, which I may have mentioned is a total bitch, other stuff has indeed been happening.

My fancy-pants new computer has arrived, and after five days of sorting out niggling issues, is now all peachy. I was having a bit of a nightmare getting in to my email accounts, but with help from Luke and Plusnet (who now take over your pc and sort it out for you remotely, as you watch. Ace!) they are all working and integrated into one place.

My next issues was with blue-ray’s. I had a blue-ray film and wanted to burn it off. The pc said it was the wrong kind of disc. Fair enough, apparently DVD’s and blue-ray’s are different discs. I bought some blue ray discs. Wrong burner.

A DVD burner doesn’t burn blue ray’s. Now you’re just taking the piss. This means I’ve had to order a blue ray burner for the pc. The brand new, build to your own spec, pc. Or to put it another way, I’ve just bought a brand new DVD burner in my pc that is never going to be used because it is obsolete tech. Balls.

It never even occurred to me that blue rays and DVD’s were different.

Grrr.

Hopefully when it gets here it will be easy to install.

The other thing I’ve ordered is a new router. For some reason whenever you turn the landline on or off (and often when you’ve done nothing) you lose the connection to the internet and have to reboot the router. Hopefully it’s the ancient router that is at fault. If not it’s only £40 and a new router is worth having anyway.

With the new pc I included a new keyboard and mouse. Nice easy set up, no messy wires (the old wireless ones had plug-in  receivers on wires, this one just has a dongle thing that plugs into a USB port. Tidy.) and the keyboard is quiet. The old one sounded like a manual typewriter. I can get away with typing now without Wendy killing me.

Work continues to be inconvenient hours but it’s steady, 5 days a week work. To the same place, doing the same job. That I like. Saying that, on Friday I got to Crewe to pick up my trailer for Cowley and they couldn’t find it (not unusual, Crewe is a farce of a depot) after an hour and a half they declared they couldn’t find it because they didn’t have one for me. They sent me to Barnoldswick instead. I’d been there once before and hated it, tiny roads and that stupid, four barrier-ed, impossibly tight crossroads. This time, expecting the worst, I found I took it all in my stride. I may be improving. Yay!

And I’m definitely getting better at that hideous reverse at Cowley.

I was saying to Wendy, I think I’ll stick at it until February before looking for another job. This is the time of the year when work is plentiful on the agency, but come January there is nothing for six weeks or so. At least with this job it is ongoing. And by the time it picks up again next year I’ll have utterly mastered this reverse.

Then I can apply for any job, confident in being able to do anything they throw at me.

I can’t seem to write without mentioning the running, so here’s a quick word. It seems I have four weeks to get up to the standard of the starting point of my training plan to fit in with the races I’ve booked. So I have to build up from one mile (6.05) to 3 miles in 18 minutes in the next four weeks. Not easy, but it sounds possible.

The other thing to note about the plan is it is (deliberately?) sadistic. If you run a 3 mile sprint one day and then a 15 mile ‘easy’ run the next day it is not easy. I decided to at least make it a tough course if I was doing an easy pace, so ran up to Frodsham hill and back. But event he starting, fairly flat, mile was enough to have me sweating and thinking about quitting. I suppose it’s so you train your legs to run tired.

Anyway, day of rest (apart from 21 mile round trip to work on the bike) today. Sprint tomorrow.

Right, better get ready for work.

Which reminds me, someone who managed a 3.19 marathon was saying the two keys are repetition and weight loss. Back to the diet then. *sigh*

Buck.