Eternally Grateful

L gets up early and heads off for the gym with my personal training plan. She doesn’t take the dogs out. Oh yes, I nearly forgot. The yappy one (and Doggo) are coming with me aren’t they. Three day dog show, run by my own club.

The show starts at 1pm but I’ve been told to get there for 8.30am because there is so much to do but I know from past experience that this isn't usually the case. So I don't rush. I get there at just gone 9.00 to find that not much is happening, as ever. I should have stayed in bed, although L had bolted early, so not that much fun on my own. At least the dogs get plenty of walks, making sure that they’re nice and relaxed, as well as knackered for their first run at 1pm.

I’m assigned to ring manage for two days and then I get Sunday off, apart from helping clear up afterwards. Working on a ring doesn’t make for very good performances in the ring, because you’re just too busy to concentrate when it gets to your turn.

There are just two runs each for the boys today. Doggo misses a contact, tut tut, but then goes clear in jumping. MD messes up the weaves in jumping but then goes clear in the agility. Yayyyy. 18th place, outside the rosettes but that’ll do for starters.

L says she’ll be ecstatic with 18th tonight in her race. I’d be ecstatic for her. In fact that’s better than I usually do.

I leave the show and head straight to Shipley Park to meet her there for the Heanor 5 mile race. It’s a 7.30 start and I’m on Shipley Park for 7.10, only... no one else is. I feel I’m in the wrong place. The start is at Shipley Park Cricket Club. Hmmm. No cricket club here. I think that should be Shipley Cricket Club. I jump back in the car and eventually find the right place, five minutes after the race start. It’s a good job I wasn’t intending to run in it.

Also after being fine all day, it’s now tipping it down. The boys and I gallantly stand in the rain and support L. For once even Doggo looks happy that he’s not running. Once L finishes, we leg it to the car and then home to dry off.

She tells me that the wait is over... Panda Bear's new single is out. I hide my excitement well. L asks me if I’ll download it for her tonight, she’s not good at doing these things. If I do, she says, she’ll be eternally grateful... and seduce me with candles, wine with Panda Bear playing in the background... I’m not sure that quite does it for me. We get the bus to the Crown instead.

Zoning Out

I'm feeling a bit knackered this morning, three days cycling to work and a game of squash is taking its toll. I’m on the bus, not for a rest but so that I can run part of the way home. I need to restart the long training runs. The Buxton Half Marathon is on the dim and not too distant horizon, just three weeks away.

L says her training for it will be ‘not serious’. Just three or four 10 milers and the bluff her way round... doesn't sound like much of a bluff to me.

I do 9.25 miles, then get the bus home from Long Eaton. It seemed to go ok, once I got over the first two miles that is, which was the usual ‘I really don’t want to do this’ territory. After that, once I forgot what I was doing, zoning out I think they call it, I was fine. I just had to think pleasant thoughts.

Then I sat on the bus and everything solidified. So once home, we head off down the Plough for quite a bit of alcohol to re-lubricate everything.

Grumpy and Grumpier

I take the bus to work as I need to rescue my bike, that is, after I’ve changed the inner tube.

I make it home, without any further flats, where L is awaiting my arrival so that I can comfort the distraught MD whilst she takes Doggo out for a run. The things she’ll do to escape ‘Glee’. Doggo isn’t training tonight but MD is, although Doggo will insist on coming, just in case.

Whilst they’re out I embark on some serious last minute homework cramming and blow the dust off MD’s training cage before getting him reunited with it. Then we do some tyre work and other stuff, all before Doggo gets back to disrupt it. After which MD looks well knackered and that’s before he even gets to class.

He’s really good at class and really well behaved. I don’t think he has the energy not to be or maybe he’s remembered the rules here. That if he isn’t well behaved he’ll end up caged. I wondered if he’d forgotten about that, it’s been so long since we last used the damn thing.

In fact both dogs seem to be beyond knackered and as usual when L and I wish to curl up together for the night, we find that two creatures have beaten us to it. They're already there on the bed, cosily curled up together. Grumpy and Grumpier, which is what they transform into when I kick them off.