AUTUMN LEAVES

As I drove back from the gym this morning I passed the local tool hire shop and was confronted by a new sign on their blackboard out the front of the store - "Leaf Blowers now in stock".

Oh good I thought (not!), I hate them with a passion.

It's not that I don't like autumn itself. It can seem like a sad time when summer first fades away but it's a beautiful time too - wonderful colours and usually not too cold..... but lots of leaves, everywhere. And here, I suppose, is where the leaf blower comes in. Now at risk of sounding very old and boring, I'd go so far as to say that for me, a leaf blower reflects most of what is wrong in today's society. It's about wasting energy to move a problem onto somebody else, rather than dealing with it yourself. What was wrong with the good old-fashioned rake? I used to love raking up leaves as a kid, still do in fact. When you rake leaves, you put them into a pile and you deal with them.... you don't just fire up the blower and blast them off your bit of pavement into the road or onto somebody else's property. It's the easy option but for me, not the best one.

I have to confess that we do own one of these gadgets.... but I didn't buy it, I don't approve of it and I have never used it. Maybe it's just a man thing that we women don't understand! What do you think?

LUCKY RABBIT'S FOOT?

Why do we consider a rabbit's foot to be lucky?
I would beg to differ that it is the bringer of good fortune. I have a good reason why it isn't...... in fact 24 good reasons...... attached to the SIX dead rabbits I saw on a run last week!

It's been a bad week on the "roadkill spotted whilst running" front.
Today yielded a small buzzard, a robin, a frog, two pigeons,three rabbits and a squirrel.

On Thursday there was a deer on the wooded path I rang along just by the side of the road..... made me jump!
Stupidly I nearly fell over it two days later when I moved to avoid a low branch and woah.... only just avoided tripping right over it - or "stacking it" as my boys would say. I never understand that one - but then, according to them, I wouldn't as I am "too old"!

I haven't blogged for a few days as I've been really busy elsewhere. My training continues - 11 mile run and a gym session today. We are interviewing for a new partner in the surgery so that is taking up much of our time there right now. Once the two departing partners leave - one retiring, one emigrating, I will be left as the senior female partner.....

Huge congratulations to my trainer Rory Coleman who completed his 143 mile run from Nottingham to London at the weekend, dressed as a gorilla. Remember how warm it has been? Rory, you are amazing!

UTTERLY AMAZING!

Some things in life are inspirational...... and some things are just off the scale!

If you haven't been following it, you'll be amazed to hear that Eddie Izzard, more famous for his cross-dressing brand of stand-up comedy than his athletic prowess yesterday completed his incredible run for Sport Relief.

He ran 43 marathons in 51 days, covering over 1100 miles in total. Just mind-blowing stuff. I found this to be just so inspiring. I love tales of ordinary people doing extra-ordinary things. If you haven't already sponsored Eddie - you can do so here

So here's to you Eddie. I hope you are now enjoying a well deserved rest. What you have done will change the lives of more people than you will ever know.

MEN BEHAVING BADLY

No not the 90's TV series....nor interestingly what I was about to write about when I sat down to write this.

I had been about to write about the contrasts in our society. Whilst running this week I have seen the same homeless woman twice, searching through rubbish bins for plastic bags at the side of the road. She was dressed in a dirty old rainmac on a hot day and was stuffing the bags she found into a short section of one of those plastic, fold-up tunnels that kids crawl through. As she did so the traffic roared past - plenty of 4 x 4's, Porsches and BMWs amongst them..... always makes me wonder what's gone wrong in our society that in 2009, people still need to live like this.....

What caught my eye, or rather my ears as I was about to write this was the debate that suddenly flared up in the BBC1 studio between the pundits who were discussing the final minutes of the Manchester City v. Arsenal match.

Emmanuel Adebayor, who has just made a somewhat acrimonious move from City to Arsenal, scored their third goal and then raced the full length of the pitch to celebrate in front of the Arsenal fans. Was this taunting of them justified? He got a booking but will that be all? Scuffles broke out behind the goal as he did it. The studio debate got pretty heated and was about how much responsibility the players on the pitch have for how they behave. Is bad behaviour on the pitch a good enough excuse to allow adults to behave badly on the terraces?

Sounds to me like Adebayor should have known better but everyone in that Arsenal end had a choice about how they reacted. It's not enough to say he did X so I had to do Y. It doesn't have to work like that. In an ideal world wouldn't we all take responsibility for ourselves and drop this ridiculous blame culture?

On the running front it's been a good week. I've beaten my personal bests on all my shorter runs and survived a 22 miler this morning unscathed..... bit stiff but still smiling. Have a great weekend.

DAY OF REST

Well, here we are again, another week over already.
As I write this it's 8.15pm and already pitch black outside. That's one of the things that I find strange when I go and visit my Dad in Thailand - it always seems to get dark at about the same time every day, around about 6.30pm I think. Here it'll be anything from 10.30pm in the summer to just after 4pm in the depths of winter. Somehow there's something strangely comforting about the way the seasons change.....

It's been another busy week, in the surgery, on the coaching front and with my training. I did a 22 miler (long slow distance) along the canal yesterday with my younger son accompanying me on his bike. It was a lovely day for it too. The banks seemed to full of birds yesterday - ducks, geese, Canada geese, coots, moorhens and herons to name but a few (OK to name all the ones I could recognise!) Just why are baby swans called cygnets? Gosling and geese - seems to be some sort of grammatical connection.... but cygnet? Always gives me the mental picture of a cygnet ring on the hand of a pudgy east end gangster for some reason..... sort of Bob Hoskins type character, but a bit meaner somehow.

Today I felt pretty stiff and sore though and after much though decided not to train today, although it wasn't supposed to be a rest day. This was the first day I have missed in 7 weeks but I still felt pretty guilty somehow. However, with my sensible head on it seemed better to try and let the few niggles I had collected have a day to recover before getting back out there tomorrow.

Strangely I will be sitting in a lecture theatre all day tomorrow. I'm doing an update course at the local hospital. It'll be a good opportunity to catch up with some local colleagues I haven't seen for a while and I'll still be home early enough to fit in a five miler before it gets dark.... even at the speed I run !

EDDIE IZZARD - AMAZING !

A really inspirational story caught my eye this week. Hopefully you've already seen it and sponsored him but if not, here goes.

Comedian Eddie Izzard, not someone you'd necessarily realy associate with endurance events is running the length and breadth of the UK, some 1100 miles to raise money for Sports Relief. He is running around about a marathon a day, six days a week.

Bloody brilliant I say.He always was the kind of guy you had to admire, even if his comedy wasn't necessarily your cup of tea. He is brave and stands up for what he believes in and is never afraid to be himself. I love people like that, people that are happy in their own skin and aren't afraid to say so.

Follow his journey here

Eddie Izzard you are truly inspirational - good luck!

BANK HOLIDAY OVER

If you're reading this in England you may be returning to work after the Bank Holiday. It's a phrase that used to puzzle me as a kid - why Bank holiday? I used to wonder did just the bank people not work? Thinking back to recent events it might have been better if many of the high profile bankers had taken a prolonged holiday..... but then I guess many of them probably are doing so now - at our expense no doubt!

I was out running along the canal yesterday and felt it was unusually quiet everywhere. Notably there seemed to be a lot fewer people fishing then normal. Are the sort of people who fish the same people who go away for the Bank Holiday? Now I confess I'm not into fishing, I love eating fish and I used to keep marine fish as a child, before they got electrocuted.... but that's another story. It's not a sport that I can readily see the appeal of. My hunch is that most women feel the same as in all the time I have spent by the canal I don't think I have ever seen a woman fishing on her own. Yes I've seen a few small girls with their dads and a few chavvy looking teenagers sprawled on the bank, gum in mouth and Heat magazine in hand as their boyfriends fished...... but women actually fishing. A very rare site indeed. I did see two together on the opposite bank last week... almost wanted to stop and congratulate them - though for what I'm not quite sure!

This is the kind of stuff that goes through my head when I'm running... that and wondering why there seems to be a lot of single shoes about the place, on pavements, on the towpath etc. Don't people know they've lost them? There was a whole new six pack of Petit Filou yoghurts on the towpath at the weekend. Strange.... not near a shop or a fisherman, just lying there beautifully symmetrically on the path as if placed there deliberately. Gone when I passed by that way a couple of hours later though. Still, I guess you need something to pass the time if you're fishing!