Student Life

One way to get MD geared up for a fast walk is to put his breakfast in his bowl before he goes out on his morning walk. To make him ever faster slip a few of last night’s potatoes on the top. Yep that works, now he’s barking at L to get going, so that he can be back asap. I have tried to do all this surreptitiously but even if he’s out in the garden with the door closed, he still hears the rattle of food into his bowl no matter how quiet I try to be. Then he tries to batter the door down.

I wonder if I could get away with putting his food bowl at the end of the agility course. That would make him fast, though I imagine all the poles would be down.

I drive to my parents' house, leave the car there and then run the 5.5 miles to work. Its hard work and those bloody road works at Raynesway extended my route again. Whether you’re in the car, on foot or on a bike, I'm afraid there’s no chance of anything improving around there any time soon. Nothing is happening because there are no workmen or equipment there any more because the contractor behind the road development has gone into administration. Great.

At least John Grisham kept me entertained. Julia (Roberts) is really getting going on the case now.

L tries to give Son a dress rehearsal as regards managing to survive on his student loan on a weekly basis. She gives him a week's money and off he goes to Poundland... Do they sell food? Don’t they just sell bags of out of date boiled sweets, made by Taiwanese women on £1 a month?

Later he drops off his week's worth of shopping. 6 pot noodles. Oh and a plates and dishes set that he got for a fiver. Which is actually very resourceful of him. I’m impressed. He says he’ll sort the rest of his supplies later and then heads off to meet some friends in the pub. Student life? Seems he's got the hang of it.

The run back the other way to my parents' is much better. I always struggle with morning runs. Unfortunately 99% of races are in the morning.

At the match tonight Derby are even more impressive than they were on Saturday. It's been quite a transformation. They win 3-1 against Middlesbrough, who were a much better team than Crystal Palace on Saturday but we even give them the lead, miss a penalty and still win with room to spare.

(Tuesday 28th September)

Not Rocket Science

There’s a match again tonight, that’s two Tuesday’s on the trot. I can’t recall that happening before, ever. So again and I take the car to my parents place and run in from there with the added bonus this time that they let me run the short route down Raynesway this time.

Then I do the whole thing in reverse again after work, although according to the latest Kilomathon newsletter, worryingly entitled ‘3 weeks to go’ I needn’t have bothered. They reckon at this stage of the proceedings, ‘mental preparation may be more beneficial than physical preparation, as most of the hard work should be done by this point’. Which planet is that they’re emailing from?

So I take them on trust, mental limbering up for the run back. This involves pondering which route to go and whether to risk listening to Mika or not. It would be a waste of several weeks of training if I inadvertently hurled myself in front of a passing car part way through ‘Big Girl (You Are Beautiful).

Freaky things occurring as regards Derby County at the moment. Tonight they score five, although the three they concede hint at the fact that the holes in that defence are far from fixed yet. The make up of the rest of the team is looking up though. Although team management is hardly rocket science. If you pick your best strikers (Rob Hulse and Kris Commons) rather than leave them on the bench, then they have a better chance of scoring and your midfield has a better chance of performing if you put your best central midfield player (Paul Green) in central midfield rather than on the wing where he looks lost. As I said, not rocket science.

Stranger Things Have Happened But Not Often

I park my car at my parents’ house and run in to work. It was a reasonable run and my iffy calf seemed to behave itself. I did have one problem though. The building of the rather unnecessary industrial park hear Alvaston has been snarling the traffic up for weeks and it’s a long term project, so there's no prospect of any respite any time soon. This morning though they had also closed the main road, Raynesway, to pedestrians. Apparently that includes runners as well. Flippin’ roadworks, can’t even avoid them when I run. So I had to detour through Alvaston, which must have added a mile or so. Yes I know it's all good extra training but it made me late for work.

As for my time... 9k in 46 minutes. Terrible. Slit my wrists stuff, but I suppose I did waste a lot of time scratching my head, trying to decide which route to go and attempting to negotiate with a yellow coated workman whose only form of communication appeared to be the ‘shrug’, as in ‘of the shoulders’.

So not happy... but happier than my Kilomathon training work colleague who ran the eleven miles home last night and crawled in this morning. Say he’s exhausted and can’t see how he’s going to add another five miles to that. L suggests I tell him to try training for a cycle event at the same time... but I daren’t. I think he would turn violent, if he had the strength.

I apologetically confess to him that I am running again tonight, back to my parents house, although going nowhere near Raynesway this time.

Ah the joys of the Fantasy Football League.

Where you find yourself performing complex mathematical calculations each time some player in a match somewhere crosses a ball.
Where you find yourself supporting teams that you really should hate.
Where you find that you are more bothered about your fantasy team than your 'real' team.
Where you get up early in the morning to update your team selection for the thirty-second time.
Where you spend more time thinking about team selection than work.
Where you wish you put this amount of thought into the rest of your life.

We’re starting a self-help group called Fantasy Football Anonymous. So if you can answer yes to more than two of those statements, let me know and I’ll put the membership forms in the post. Not that you’ll be able to spare the time to actually fill them in as this week some teams play more than once... and one of your players has probably got booked or injured and will not play...

Seriously though, you can’t beat it, great fun. Well I am top of the league at the moment... but that is before tonight’s games. This reminds me, I must update my team selection again.

Derby County are not eligible for the Fantasy League, what with not being in the Premier League, so at least I don’t get a conflict of interest. Tonight’s game though is as close to ‘fantasy’ as you can get. League leaders Newcastle United are in town and like Forest the other week are in the midst of a long unbeaten run. So obviously Derby win 3-0 and thoroughly deserve it. Stranger things have happened but not often.