Now running with GPS

This involves me clutching my phone in my hand while it records my vital data. Today's run (which I did after work, as I couldn't drag myself out of bed this morning) lasted just over 11 minutes, and now I know that I nearly cleared 2km. How trustworthy this all is is questionable though, as I'm sure I didn't run in such an oddly jagged line and through people's houses:



Anyway, you can look at the graphs and so on on my Nokia Sports Tracker page. Oh it's all so technological.

As I was saying to a friend earlier on, I don't know if the running is feeding the blogging, or the blogging is feeding the running. All I know is I continue to run. And feed! I still haven't lost any weight. Ian tells me I need to control my calories as well. Nice in theory, but it seems to me as though the running is making me hungrier than ever.

I got my car back from its MOT today. It cost me £370, which is not as bad as I was expecting. I made a bit of a fool of myself in the garage - I sounded really confused about the whole concept of getting one's car MOTd, and I walked off initially without taking the MOT certificate. I wonder why they didn't cotton on to this and call me back in to pay some more - I probably would have done whatever they said.

Some upstairs neighbours of ours, who have recently moved in, were hovering around the bushes outside our flats when I came in from work. They were trying to find their cat, Pepper, who they'd let out of the house for the very first time. Pepper looks exactly the same as Colin, except she is a slight and slender ladycat who can be picked up by her owner by the scruff of the neck like a purse without the slightest complaint while prosaic cat-owner-discussions are had.

Later on, Ian and I saw a mismatched couple from the other flats who were taking their rather moody cat for a walk on a lead. After seeing someone lose their cat, this actually looked like a good idea at the time.

Also arriving from work I had some good news - an invitation for an interview for a Neuro Rehab SLT job at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge. Ian and I are both applying a little more widely afield now. We both are throwing quite a lot of crap to see what sticks. Hopefully this one will stick for me. I also made a phonecall to a trust up here in the North East who're advertising at the moment.

Chicken livers and rocket for tea. Am I dieting? It feels like it.

First proper midweek run

I managed multiple raisings of my heart rate today, and I'm tired and quite pleased with myself. I woke at just before my alarm at 6am - I had a dream (or was it) that someone was 'rapping' on our front door very hard. Perhaps it was an intervention to get me out of bed, since I'd had only a couple of hours sleep, and I was surely going to turn over my alarm. Although believing such things would have me look rather mad.

Anyhow, I ran for 10 minutes, came back and had a muffin (there was some fruit in the muffin, in my defence) and then cycled to work for the first time. Hills that I haven't noticed myself accelerate to clear in the hundreds of times I've driven up that road, I laboured over like a shaky old man, the type you might point at and say - 'he may as well get off and push'.

I'm cycling in again tomorrow, as my car's still not fixed. Maybe I'll change gear this time.

Yesterday Ian and I met with Kat, Tor and Dionne and her array of cousins for the Evolution Festival, down on the dockside at NewcastleGateshead (a single, river-spanning tourist destination to rival Budapest, or so the council hacks would have you believe).

We went to the dancier stage on the Gateshead side, populated by the likes of 'Does it Offend you, yeah?' (answer - no. Totally, totally inoffensive and bland), 'New Young Pony Club' (they covered PJ Harvey's Dress - joy!), 'Crystal Castles' (feted by Rough Trade, but Ian and I ignored this and went for tapas. Apparently the best band of the day, although they only played three songs), 'Hercules and Love Affair' (what a scam - no Anthony - and what a dull band anyway), 'CSS' (headlining - we left early to miss the hordes of disappointed people). All of these bands had half arsed beats, and half arsed songwriting, and sadly the wind was whipping up the Tyne and washing whatever good intentions and sparse ideas that the bands might have had with it. I wish I'd gone to the other side to watch the Streets.


Here's a naff picture I took as we were leaving.

Thanks very much to Steven and to the cheeky anonymous person who kindly donated money. Nine percent - not bad! I need all the support I can get. It hurts it hurts!

Second Run - Essentially the same as the first

Albeit, marginally longer at 15 minutes. The panting was still a feature, but at least this time I didn't have to run past any impressionable children as I did on Thursday. While the run was essentially encouraging, my breakfast - Kentucky Fried Chicken, was not particularly well advised, and Ian and I actually felt somewhat drugged afterwards.

A multitude of dull things were accomplished. I bought another bag of cat food for the cat. We'd been trying to get him on to the cheap stuff but he was starving himself, crying and hating us for it, so we had to go with the real deal. Why have we made our cat so fussy? Ian and I created a menu for the week (it saves us money!), turned it into a shopping list (which I lost and we had to recover from our memories) which we bought at Netto and Tesco. I told you this was dull.

I also got my bike fixed for £5 up the road - they pulled a thorn out of the tyre, changed the inner tube for me, and stopped the embarrassing brake-squeal. Since my car's taking its time to come back from its service (Wednesday as it stands) I will need it to get to work next week. I'm thankful that it's half term and I won't have to cycle to Walker every day.

Ian, Caroline and me went to see the remarkable Felice Brothers last night, at a packed Cluny. They were rip-roaring, barnstorming, marvellous - - seemingly having no trouble dealing with their tiredness at having been up for more than 24 hours to get to Newcastle. I heard two separate people (or maybe the same person putting on accents) saying that they sounded like The Band, 40 years ago.

I liked them alot. I loved the way that they were constantly throwing things at each other and trying to kick one another during songs. I bet the Everley Brothers never did that. Take a look at a video of them doing a song where they spare one another:



The singer has a marvellous voice - the sort that doesn't come round all that often. He shared a moment with my friend Caroline, where he asked her her name, and played her request for her. Not quite as good as when Regina Spektor stopped a song to say 'bless you' to me from the other side of the arena (it was a good sneeze), but not bad all the same.

Thanks to Will, who's my first donator. Good on you!

First run horror

In this spirit of being utterly honest about how much work I have to do, here is a picture of me wearing all white (something I never do), which goes some way to demonstrating how much work I have to do before October. I have covered my modesty somewhat with a copy of my training schedule.

The run itself was okay - I tried to avoid the gaze of others as I jiggled around the streets around my house. I was gasping in a most unseemly manner towards the end of this 10 minute run. According to the schedule it should be followed by two full rest days, to ease myself into this. Sounds okay to me.

The rest of the day was relatively agonising, but I should imagine that tomorrow morning will be substantially worse, for me, and no doubt for those around me.

In other news, my car is going to cost more than £400 pounds to get through its MOT (again), and I still don't have a job as a speech therapist. They won't be able to turn down a svelte Neil Barrett though come the autumn!

Caroline is coming this weekend, we'll be watching a band, and it's also bank holiday weekend. I plan to put my bike back on the road and do some supplementary exercise in that manner. Sorry this post is so long.

Bit of background

I am currently heavier (read 'fatter') than I've ever been, and I know it needs fixing. Often when people settle into comfortable, secure relationships, they put on weight, and this has certainly happened in my case. I simply quite like cake, and all of its brothers and cousins on the food pyramid. Add on to that the fact that I have never really weighed the right amount, and you can see that I was adding problem onto problem.

A couple of years back, I went to the gym solidly for around a month, and I went down to 12/13 stone. I'm now well above that (15 stone, and with a body shape that scares children). This is why I responded to a request from Newcastle University for subjects to take part in a study to see whether physical activity improved a persons metabolism. I thought, that sounds a bit obvious - there must be more to this. I presumed that gym memberships were being given out as a part of this, and I went ahead with the series of little tests last weekend.

This involved:

• Sitting in a sealed egg-shaped compartment to have the volume of my body measured
• A fasting glucose blood test
• Exercising with tubes coming out of my arm and my mouth
• Sitting down for 30 minutes. I got my heart rate as low as 47bpm when I concentrated on it. They said that it was good - that it implied that I had a "big heart"
  

No gym memberships, it's all to be done on the streets of Newcastle. What's going on is that I have been entered in the group that has been given places on the Great North Run, which is taking place on the 5th of October.

I have been given a pretty complete training schedule (see my planner on the right), and I am very determined to stick to it. I have even paid to enrol myself on the Great Yorkshire Run on the 7th of September, which is not as great as the Great North Run, as it is only (only!) 10 kilometres.

So please feel free to monitor my progress, and please donate if you feel I, and the millions of people all over the world who lack access to clean water, deserve it.