THE GOOD BUCK

Oh dear, oh dear.

You know I  went for that run and pulled my right calf/ tendon? I stretched it off today and went for a marathon run. After 6 miles my left calf/ tendon suddenly started hurting. I carried on the next 8 miles back to the house (I was doing a 14 mile loop followed by a 12 mile one) and just around the corner from our house my right went! Badly. I shuffled the final few hundred yards and quit.

It’s a well known fact that cycling shortens your tendons. A fact that I’ve never believed because it has never affected me. Now I’m a believer. 4 weeks until the race and I’m only good for 6 miles before things start breaking. Oh dear. Drastic action is required. I can’t stop cycling, but I’m going to run for an hour every day to try to get my legs in running condition.

It’s been a strange and stressful week. I worked the bank holiday Monday but then my run wasn’t on for 10 days. Seems the factory still celebrate Whitsun. I don’t even know what that is.

I took advantage and told the agency I was having Tuesday and Wednesday off to train. Ha! Tuesday I was struck down with a cracking headache. Which reminds me, in the previous few weeks, when I was cutting out the chocolate and riding my bike to work every day, I didn’t get a headache. That is pretty amazing for me.

I’m not sure if it was the lack of chocolate/ butter or the exercise keeping my sinuses flowing (tmi, I know!) but it was welcome.

It was my birthday! Huzzah!

I was working, and I don’t drink or do other drugs, but I celebrated by not dying. Again. Quite the party animal, me.

However, it got me to thinking; all I do is work, sleep whenever I can, and train whenever I can force myself to do so. Life is passing me by. No more. I have a plan!

It’s been tweaking of the norm at work. I was getting in for 1500hrs, sitting around for 30- 90 minutes for that jobsworth I’ve been sharing a unit (truck) with to get back then trotting off up to the Scottish border, doing a trailer swap and then back to Crewe. This takes until about 2330hrs. Then on Tuesday the guy at Crewe went on one. “You’re supposed to be here by 8 o’clock! Now we’ve missed the connection for the next driver” etc, etc. I let him rant a bit then told him that was a good run. I couldn’t get there much faster. If he wanted an earlier delivery I’d have to start earlier. “It’s not rocket science.”

That went down well.

I put my ‘phone on silent when I go to bed otherwise I get random tweets and emails waking me up. On Wednesday I got up at 1210, had a quick shower, turned the volume back on on my ‘phone and saw I had two missed calls and a text. From the agency. Start at 1300hrs from today.

You know that little incident I had last week with my TomTom (supposedly) Trucknav?

The one that nearly had me ringing the police and blubbing like a girl?

I got on to TomTom. There was no way to contact them on the ‘phone so I ended up in a protracted email exchange. I said that I’d looked it up and there were two versions of the model I have, one for cars and one for trucks. They said they only sold the lorry one, so I couldn’t have the car one. They told me to check my settings. I did. Then tried the test route again. (Irlam  to Lymm. The quickest route takes you down a B road and over a 3 ton bridge.)