Author: Buck

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.

I’ve referenced it before but I’ll jog your memory. It’s a war drama film, a German sergeant who has an Iron Cross and his younger, vainglorious officer who desperately wants one. The officer lies to try and get one and tries to get the sergeant killed to cover his lie. In the end, as the allies are closing in and all hell is breaking loose, the sergeant prepares to run out into the fight he says to the officer “Come with me, I’ll show you where the Iron Crosses grow.”

That is where my rather pretentious and somewhat tenuous blog post title came from.

Bugger.

You know how I’ve set myself the goal of the landmark sub 3 hour marathon for next year? And how 4 runs ago I was pleased to get back to my pre-injury PB 10 mile time of 1:15 (7.30 m/m)? Yesterday I was over the moon to do it in 1:14.43 (just under 7 m/m).

Today I started looking for flattest/ fastest marathon courses for next year. This lead me to Runners World website and from there to training plans and an equivalence calculator. ie, if you can run 5 miles in X you can run 10 miles in Y.

Fun weekend off, after a fashion. Actually, not so much fun. Fulfilling, maybe.

Last week at work was something of a nightmare. They closed the M6 in two places on one night, two different sections the next night, and it was just miserable. The main lesson I have learned is; whatever the circumstances *NEVER* divert through Stafford. It took me about two hours to get through the 8 or so miles of diversion one afternoon, and an hour and a half to get back then next day at gone midnight. It takes you straight through a poxy town centre, replete with traffic lights, single lane streets and road works. The first night I ran out of driving hours (maximum of ten driving hours a shift, three times a week. Normally your maximum is nine hours.) The second night I just scraped in at ten hours.

After my last entry, saying how I’d banged that reverse in without breaking a sweat, the rest of the week I made a meal of it. I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t working. On Friday I watched as another driver set to it. I was reversing the trailer down the middle of the road, swinging the arse end up to the posts and trying to wriggle it in from there. He drove from the far side of the road and swung the back as wide as possible. He was more or less lined up whilst still eight feet from the posts. Loads of room to straighten up and correct without worrying about hitting anything. I’ll try that tomorrow.

I’ve got the directions in my head for both drops now. All I have to do is crack that reverse. When I’m confident about that I think I’ll be applying for a new job. I’ll be competent in all respects of the job then. I mean, I can get it done now, but I want to be able to bang it in first go, knowing that the side I can’t see is not going to hit anything. That’s still my biggest problem, having the confidence to back in at an angle.

This is brilliant practise for that. I have warehouse lads to shout if I’m going to hit something. Ideal. That is the game plan, then; crack this reverse, apply for new job.