What better way than a 6 part outing to draw a letter for “aintfastaintpretty”, the blog of GPS drawing during such outings as mine. The idea was a few people contributing to the art with letters spelling out what else but “Janathon”. I chose an “A”. Here it is:

It was brought to you by a sheep field, a 100ft tape (it’s 200ft along each leg, the form scaled up from sans serif font so it looked reasonable), a bit of triangulation, 12 socks and a Garmin 405 which I hovered over each of the turn points to make sure they were crisp. It’s 0.14 miles around the perimeter and I’m quite pleased with it.

My calf is again ensconced in strapping and a bit sore but I don’t think it’s completely ruined. Not yet, anyway.

Might try another short outing later…150 miles is a long way away in two outings if it is knackered.

Unfortunately the sombre mood that saw me steadily plodding through my paces took a turn for the painful 5 miles in when multiple arcs of pain through my right calf stopped me in my tracks. No idea why; I was warm and rolling cleanly through the paces at 8 minute miles, on the flat with neutral camber. Just something else to wonder about, I guess.

Massaged and strapped as I am for the evening, hopefully I’ll be ok for a short plod at least tomorrow. The knot in the muscle won’t ease with a massage, ibuprofen hasn’t made it any more free yet but I can flex it in the strapping and no pain increases so hopefully a good night will see it somewhere.

9.5 more miles in three days isn’t too much to ask having gone over 140 already, is it?

Ran just over 5 miles from work last night, oblivious to the goings on around me. Didn’t get as far as blogging before the world turned upside down. Service will, I fear, never be able to return to normal but I’m sure everything will sort itself out somehow.

Life has a habit of doing that.

With little enthusiasm I tried to conjure a different route to instill a sense of “easy” mileage into my soul. It showed as I left the house and ended up looping the nearest, smallest estate before creating a messy Garmin trace as I simply tacked little dead ends onto the large circle to up the distance to something near target.

It was a vile run (I love the word “vile”. One of our labourers is a dirty (as in doesn’t understand the principle of soap and water), smelly, obese individual with a penchant for annoying anyone within earshot. Hence why he’s in the last chance saloon of site work instead of maintenance from whence he came. Our forklift driver overheard two of us discussing him and nonchalantly pitched in with an unprovoked comment that “he’s a vile little man, isn’t he?”. A perfect description using a much under-rated word. I was happy.). I found no rhythm, my left lower leg in particular gave out several sharp twangs of pain in the early mile to make me consider turning back and each pace seemed to last for twenty minutes despite the whole outing only taking 43 of them. It never fails to amaze me that 8 miles in Paris seemed to last 5 seconds, simply because it’s a varied and attention grabbing destination. All paces being equal, I wonder how to alter the mind to overcome the difficulty of dull runs? Music, I guess. But since I like up-tempo, some would say predominatly fast tunes and I need to keep leg movement slow to maintain leg structure, it isn’t really an option at the moment.

Ah, well. Keep it up for 5 more days and it will all be over.

Today, incidentally, I passed last year’s total distance. But even that didn’t raise a smile at the time. I must be jaded!

124 runs, 96 exercises and 47 cycles to go.

Next week I’ll be spending the equivalent evening (not) answering pub quiz questions and that knowledge alone is enough for a bit of a shot in the arm.

My legs felt a little fresher today again. A run at 8.03 per mile (yesterday) seems to have restorative powers, even if it does upset me to go so slowly. It’s a minute outside my normal running pace and I worry I’m going to get to like it and not speed up when the challenge is over.

But since I have no races currently planned (indeed, there’s nothing to prohibit my retirement from competitive activity. No-one will miss my non-appearances, I’m sure, except the odd St. John ambulance station when I prove myself fragile again), it hardly matters.

The only odd turn of events is how my mileage has increased week-on-week over Jnauary. I have been convinced at every turn that something’s about to break and that is what has probably resulted in me shortening my stride massively and slowing down a lot. But it also looks likely to get me to 150 miles, around 5 per day average. Considering 4 per day last January gave me 2 months off running with an injury and there’s little sign of one of those at the moment, it’s amazing. I might try for 6 per day average next year…if there is a next year.

But that’s the demon of Janathon. Since FairWeatherRunner mentioned 150 miles and I took up the baton, my mind has rolled the idea of 5 per day (155 total)  around. Then I saw someone was targetting 160. Then I saw a mate has done 4.44 miles averaging 6.47 per mile. Then I thought about how long until I do 1.30 for the half marathon and if I assault one fresh off Janathon. So many ideas, I’m simply going to run for the next 6 days (hopefully) and see where I get.

150 is the target and it won’t change. I haven’t got a proper long run in me and I need a cut-back sometime soon, I fear. While I can do a longer plod I will in case of a cold or something scuppering my plan. But the idea of only having to do a magic mile on the last day…oh, please. But then Rachel will push on to 155 or something silly and I’ll wonder if maybe I should try harder…

Oh, stop it! For a completely uncompetitive bloke, I need to get a grip and remember that I’m useless. And that I must sort out my mortgage. So must go!

125 runs, 96 exercises and 47 cycles to go.

The boiler repair arrangements went very simply; the only issue was leaving at 3.30 or so to get home to allow time to have a look at it. The main thing with that was that I had to set out a building after lunch in order to give the architect the dimensions of the garden it fits into so he has information to extend the floor plan to accommodate a disabled family. The hiccup there was that I forgot the calculator, so tried to use the company mobile as a calculator to work out a hypotenuse to double check the co-ordinates with a good old fashioned tape measure. But the phone’s so shite it has no square root function (the old Nokia used to). So I radioed the office where our trainee was doing paperwork to ask him to plug the numbers in to the calculator up there. Having done the square calculations, all I wanted was the square root of the two numbers I gave him. His answer was unbelievable. He went to the Harvey Grammar School. A selective school in Folkestone, named in honour of the geyser who determined how blood flows around the body. A school that clearly hasn’t bothered to teach him what a fucking square root button on a calculator looks like. No word of a lie, the words that came back to me upon my request were “what’s a square root and what does it look like on a calculator?”. My response to that included far too many swear words for even my blog as well as an invitation to contact his teachers so I may throttle them followed by the decision that his calculation wasn’t to be trusted so I’d return to the office and get the calculator myself.

Which is where I came to the hiccup. Trying to run up the site (albeit in rigger boots) made my entire lower leg area hurt so much I simply couldn’t manage it. I had to walk. Which was lucky for the trainee since I calmed down and failed to sack him for being a cretin (but at least he admitted his lack of basic mathematical understanding, so at least he admits his shortcomings, I guess.). But was worrying for my run.

So it came to pass that I returned home, found out the boiler was bodgeable but might last “between a minute and a month” giving the wallet a brief reprieve at least, then headed out for a worried about plod.

A reverse route to yesterday was started (I had intended to run around Rye. That’ll be tomorrow now) and went ok, if painfully. My pace was low with the aim of preserving my legs and I manged to shuffle around but as I got near home, I considered that I won’t have a long run in me at the weekend (FairWeatherRunner take note…you’ll beat me at the line, I think, if you do another big half marathon training run as I feel you must have planned…maybe a 14 miler?!) so added a little loop to finish the distance to 5.4 miles. And each of them was sore.

Then I realised I hadn’t bought milk, so popped out on the BMX to buy some. And felt my legs get better with every pedal stroke. And manual. And x-up over drain covers.

God, I love cycling. But it was late enough that I didn’t have time to play properly.

Hope my legs feel like mine again tomorrow. It is the last Wednesday of Janathon, after all, and I’d like a hill to be enjoyable.

126 runs, 96 exercises and 47 cycles to go.

Knowing I fancied 5 miles this evening to keep on top of my new 150 mile target (mainly to avoid having to do longer runs this coming weekend in case I’m still tired), this wasn’t good.

Getting home and finding cool radiators with all the signs that they should be warm wasn’t good. Checking the obvious bits for failure (thermostat, air, time clock) and finding none wasn’t good. Checking the hot water circuit and finding the same wasn’t good. Surmising that the boiler has failed and then going for a run wasn’t the best way to head out, to be honest.

But the boiler situation messed my brain and my first mile was tragically fast, concentrating on all things other than pace. So the others were correspondingly painful, especially on the outsides of each of my shins.

Most of the run was spent wondering how badly my legs would feel at the end of the run. I intended doing a short loop of the odd housing estate first (odd in that it doesn’t belong to any of the others around here), then simply barging up the bypass and coming home via the same loop as I went out.

But I sacked off the final loop (which is about .75 miles) and headed home for more boiler investigations.

4.6 miles isn’t too appalling, considering.

Looking at a new boiler to have a comfortable life is. At least it’s not a combi-boiler, so as long as the immersion heater still works…

127 runs, 96 exercises, 47 cycles to go.

It got me thinking about it so much that as I was painting the dining room this morning I was idly considering how many miles I could “not do” this week and still allow myself to achieve the target. I don’t know if I’ve another decent long run in me for next weekend, I hope I’ve two 5 mile evenings of energy for the week, so using last week as a gauge I reckon I’ll be three miles down on a 5 per evening average. And I’ve managed at least 12 miles each weekend, so maybe it is achievable.

That’s one of the best things about the Janathon/Juneathon event. Ideas get aired, inspiration gained and goalposts moved. If I go for 150, it’ll be twice my initial target. If I achieve it injury free, happiness will be mine. Since I’ve also been doing my hills and the occasional quick mile, maybe I won’t struggle too much to find a decent pace again.

But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. One outing at a time. After all, my legs are hardly what you’d call fresh.

After an outing in the local pub last night saw a huge cross-section of the population represented (including two bikers who may have re-ignited the Isle of Man spark. Just maybe. 1994 and my last visit is a long time ago, after all) I set off wondering just how odd everyone else sees me. After all, an ageing man in need of a haircut wearing tights and chasing shadows in a running challenge isn’t the stereotypical building site manager, I wouldn’t imagine, but somehow it seems normal. One thing I do bring home from work, though, is a knowledge that with the best will in the world, all programmes and schedules are optimistic. So as I headed out I knew if I didn’t put in a fair run, 150 miles would be over before it had started.

So instead of heading to Gill lane and my favourite road I detoured around a mile loop to trick my legs into not realising how far they’d gone, instead of trying to convince them to do it at the end.

That done, I took the more twisty road towards the owl sanctuary, plodded over Gill Lane itself then decided the straight boring bit I avoided on the way out could also be avoided on the way back with a small jink which would also see me “tacking” into the wind instead of facing it head on. Easily tricked, my legs.

So it came to pass that a pedalcycle was a pace target and mile 6 was outed in seven and a half minutes with the smooth feeling running through my legs that keeping a decent tempo seems to provide. It seems to be fear that is slowing me down. Oh, and sore shins.

A decent feeling run ended totalling 7.48 miles which gives me scope for some shorter outings in the week. 9 runs to go and it feels as though my limbs will make it. Everything’s crossed, but if I don’t do anything silly then hopefully it’ll all be good.

The only pain is that I’m so tired I’m going to have to do some catching up on my weights sessions when running gets back to normal to have any chance of feeling good in a t-shirt as the summer nears. But then if Janathon goes well, maybe it’ll be the spur I need for an excellent year.

It’s started out well.

128 runs, 96 exercises and 47 cycles to go (a short trip to the farm shop on the bike doesn’t count as one of my rides, even if the mileage is added to RunningFree. My rules, I’ll stick to them!)

On Thursday I had an idea for a weekend outing that would make a change from my country lanes and take me beyond my usual town routes. I didn’t map the mileage but knew it to be beyond the run last week by a comfortable margin. I guessed around 10 miles.

I also had in mind that Rachel has been doing exactly the same mileage as me during Janathon (the marvel of the RunningFreeOnline totals and training analysis pages…none of this fun would have been possible so easily as little as 5 years ago, I fear!), so a long run would be the only way to keep her in sight as her distance inevitably doubles at the weekend and the way to improve my running is to find inspiration from fellow Janathoners.

But last night saw a 4 mile run covered very late for me, so I had no idea how I’d feel today.

The answer came by surprise as the work phone got me running down the stairs straight from bed and, as I answered it, I realised that both legs felt ok. A quick system check revealed that both feet were still attached and ready to move, too. Maybe a shock in the morning is the way to go about weekends after all.

So, after killing my trusty orbital sander preparing the dining room this morning (a final electrical “pop” and the sweet smell of burnt electrics confirming that I’d not get away with repairing it again) and having to buy a new one (cheapest I could find – I’ll buy a proper one for when I start making my windows and need a decent finish, but for wall abuse and the wrong type of dust, cheapest is sometimes best) and having lunch and going shopping, I got out of the door in running kit.

Shorts and everything. 13 degrees on the car thermometer is April temperature, confirmed by the daffodils in the front garden (photos will follow if they’re stupid enough to trust producing flowers as they have done stems!), so it would have been rude not to.

And a steady pace (very steady, almost metronomic) was dialled in towards town. A stiff breeze meant no dental flavours or the like, just the encouragement that pushing into them now would make the return journey more pleasant (ie. easier!). I took a few detours from my planned run but stayed true to the overall course. A section of footpath has been removed and a big rut mixed with sloppy footwork (I was watching a Focus RS being ragged along the busy bit of road, to be honest) caused a big turned ankle, but panic subsided as I ran cleanly and realised that I’d got away with no more than a twinge to add to my niggles.

A bit of a detour lead me to the Eureka business park on the opposite side of town and the chance to touch the opposite boundary to where I live on the Faversham road so, having got that far, I carried on to it.

I guessed that was half way. And the return saw my legs singing to me, as they do. Most strides revealed a different chord. Either a blister (well…bits of hard skin gradually sloughing off, really) telling me it was getting hot and rubbing or a knee saying it was tired or a shin moaning that it was swolen and rubbing on something or other. But nothing major or worrying.

The paces ticked by and before long I was back at the railway station. A Garmin check as I waited for traffic let me know all I feared. I was going to get home a fraction under 10 miles if I took no detours. How far under 10 was concerning. It looked like a few yards.

So I started to focus on crossing the road to use the outside radius of corners. I crossed the main road 3 times during gaps in traffic, wondering if the 8 or so metres each time would be sufficient. I used the pedestrian lights by Tesco to add a jink and roundabout to the disatnce.

But as I got within yards of the house I wondered if HK was wrong. How nice if (like when I stopped at 699 miles in Juneathon) I didn’t conform. If it would be somehow better to stop short.

But no. As I got to the front gate with 9.96 miles showing, I ran past. I briefly considered running on until 1hour 20 minutes had elapsed, but gave up on that idea as soon as 10 miles was over and I turned for home and stopped.

Only to be greeted by JogBlog as soon as I got in (like before I’d even taken my shoes off) asking if I fancied a walk with her. Apparently saying fuck off isn’t the most romantic thing to do in such a situation. But I think I rescued it by offering to accompany her after a shower.

And so we did. A 1.5 mile walk through a dark path and unlit lane seems to have eased any aches in my legs that were growing.

Wonder what mileage Rachel will taunt me with tomorrow?!

129 runs, 96 exercises and 47 cycles to go.

My avoidance of proper injury seemed to have come to an end as I got up and as well as the usual cracking and stuff from every joint below the waist, I had acquired a spiteful pain in my left foot. Not a pain of the metatarsal bursitis variety that I gave myself last Janathon but a wincing one nonetheless. From the sole just forward of my heel, upwards through the instep towards the ankle.

Wondering if it was just another thing to add to my list of hiccups I began to worry as all my walking at work was accompanied by a little limp (a limpette?) which when I noticed it and moved to correct it and stride through normally, with a roll of the foot and some articulation of the ankle, produced the same wince of pain.

And this continued all day.

So I began to wonder if I’d head out tonight and either a) ruin it completely with a big run, ending Janathon on a high, b) treat it normally and hope it would go away or c) treat it gently and hope it would repair for a decent weekend.

All pondering eased as my phone went just as I was leavng site to report someone with total boiler failure and, while not my department, since I was there would I investigate? So I did. And 45 minutes later the resident had a working boiler, hot water and heating. And a site manager with a window for happy running gone up the swanny.

And so it was that I returned home and did dinner (I hesitate to say I cooked it, merely needing to warm some things through and boil some rice), made the fire, washed up and decided I’d dig around in my foot for any hard skin etc that might be making me carry myself awkwardly. And I found some odd bits which, with a combination of nail clippers, stanley knife and glasspaper, weren’t attached to my foot for long.

So with minimal time for marvellous Indian cuisine to settle down I headed out.

Feeling flat I simply did an extended loop of Park Farm in a workmanlike fashion, easing through the strides and not feeling anything amiss with my foot at all. Really quite exciting and making me curious about what the cause is, was or might be.

Being later than usual I saw 3 police cars on different patrols, two dog walkers and that was about it. A shortlived idea about tacking a mile on the end of the run was just that – shortlived. I wasn’t in the mood for excitement or a bigger challenge than actually getting out and seeing if I have got a run in me tomorrow, so I rolled home to clock in another 4 miles.

I seem to have somehow increased mileage for the week so far from last week, so maybe this year will be more successful than last. I can’t bear the thought of a messed-up February and March like then, though, so if something is wrong with my foot I am going to stop, simple as that. Fingers crossed I wake up fresh and I can enjoy another few miles in daylight.

130 runs, 96 exercises and 47 cycles to go.