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July's Journal
September's Journal
16/08/2022
[13:00] August. And it has been hot. Far too hot for this country,
and far too hot for this person, too. I've had ongoing, but reduced, issues
with my achilles tendons, and even took a few weeks off running entirely, which
was good considering just how hot it got. I think I may have already told you
about all of that, though. The running continues, and I think I might just be
able to do the 50 miler in September. Rachel and I are going to try and recce
the route the weekend after next (following a GPX track overlayed onto the OS
Maps application on her phone) over two days. With my new trail shoes arriving
some time early next week hopefully that'll give me a bit more confidence that
I can do the whole thing in one day, and potentially under ten hours (Rachel
will likely do it in under nine).
Outside of running, my parents visited Rachel's mum in late July, and Rachel
and I were there too, of course. It was a lovely weekend for all concerned,
and many years (COVID-19) in the making. Hopefully it'll happen again before
too long. The following week I went to the dentist and got my first few weeks
of Invisalign appliances for both top and bottom teeth. I've literally bitten
the bullet and decided that it's time my teeth were straighter. I had three
different braces as a child, but in the last decade or so things have moved
around a bit and I'd prefer to look better. 18ish week from now (20 in total)
I should have a better smile. They're not great to wear, although very good
for helping (stopping) any snacking habit you have as they only thing that
doesn't clog them up is drinking water. This means they have to come out
whenever you eat. This means I have to work out what to do on longer runs
when I need to take food, and have a really good think about the recce days and
the actual race. Especially as it's strongly recommended to clean your teeth
before reinserting them. I'll talk to the dentist in early September, when I
go for my remaining sets (you change them once a week). The weekend following
me getting them I was down in Croydon and points south volunteering on a aid
station for a 100 mile race, and the then following day doing the half marathon
version of a trail race that Rachel did the full version of. I don't know if
I could have managed to do the full version given my achilles tendons, but my
coach specifically asked me to only do the half, so that's what I did.
The Monday after that, one week early than planned I headed to Manchester to
look after my parents as my mother headed into hospital to have a lung resection
to remove a potential cancer. So really I was looking after my father, who's a
little more forgetful about things these days, and then both of them once she
came back out again. Although in reality it was Rachel, who came too a day
later, who looked after us both until Saturday morning. My mother came home in
the afternoon. Brought by my brother, who was here for 48 hours to look after
me and my father (and to see us all) after Rachel left. He brought my newphew,
and two guinea pigs, which were being looked after for two weeks while their
owners went on holiday. I had a guinea pig (and so did my brother) when I was
younger, so it was nice to see some again and listen to them chunter away in
their (palacial) cage.
And now it's the new working week. My mother's recovering pretty well
(although with some minor post-operation infections being dealt with by
antibiotics) and having a sleep before lunch, my father's out doing things for
a cafe for people suffering from dementia (something he and my mother helped
found), and I'm working remotely (as I have for the past two years), and quietly
bemoaning the lack of screen realestate compared to home.
I go home on Wednesday afternoon and will be meeting Rachel at my local train
station, which is going to be wonderful. We'll have a quiet night
(although we will need to go grocery shopping), work from home on the Thursday
(a run in the morning before work), another quiet night (we really need some),
and then she'll head to the station again on Friday evening after working from
my home again for the day. The week after that should (hopefully!) be a normal
one, until Rachel comes back again on the Thursday evening, and we get up
horribly early on the Saturday morning to get to the Chilterns, run
all day, stay in a pub/B7B for the night, run all of Sunday, and then get back
home again on a booked train (which means we can't hang around on the trails).
There's more planned after that, but at this point I think some of it is still
a little up in the air. I think that's enough to be going on with.