Month: September 2013

Addendum

That bloody treadmill. It was way down South, cost me £85 just in diesel. All day driving there and back (well, from 0900 to 1730). I specifically ordered a low, short wheel base transit as that was all I would need given the dimensions of the treadmill and the load dimensions of the van. Would it fit in in it’s operating position (ie at it most stable and less likely to break)? Would it buggery! The van was an inch to small. So I had to improvise, adapt and overcome. This meant I had to lay it down, leaving the handles on the floor. So then I had to fashion a strap to hold the handles off the floor so they wouldn’t snap off. Then I got it home and had to try and manhandle 100kg of unwieldy treadmill off the van on my own. Wendy was trying to help but she is a total feeb. I’d got it half manoeuvred through the front door when I realised I would tear up the floor before I could get it past the second door. Plan B, partially strip it, whilst wedged in the front door. Eventually we got it into the kitchen and I set about re-assembling it. All in all it must have took an hour and half just to get it into the house. There is no way it is going to pop in the understairs cupboard. It is ginormous. Seriously huge. In it’s discreet, folded up, small mode it looks like the urban pacification robots off Robocop. And it won’t go upstairs so I’ve had to leave it in the kitchen. Wendy is so less than pleased. I can’t blame her. It’s just monstrous. Completely incongruous. I took some snaps, look; That’s how big it is, head height, wider than I am, and as deep. Oh dear oh dear. What a farce. A folly.   But it does the full 20kph  (4 minute 50 second /mile) the incline works and what the hell, it’s here now. Also it’s quite noisy when you are charging away at it. I gave it a few minutes at 6 minute/ mile pace just to try it (and me) out. I was doing alright, I could have done a mile at that pace.  I’ll have to leave it this week as I have the Chester marathon on Sunday, but after that I am going to set a baseline at 6m/m then work up from there. Hopefully but up to marathon distance within 6 months, then, if I’ve not died, start throwing in the 5 m/m’s. Already got the conversion chart (from it’s measured speed in Kph)   While I was transferring the pictures from my ‘phone I came across these I took on that 50 miler; apparently they flooded a village to make the reservoir we were running around. Due to the low water level you could see bits of remains. (And it was just plain picturesque. Here’s the hills reflected in the […]

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Change of plan.

First off, better update you on the Wendy front. She went back to the hospital on Thursday as an outpatient, the whisked her straight in and scanned the crap out of her. They couldn’t find it at first but kept looking until they confirmed it was a shitload of tiny gall stones, about 1mm each. Apparently this is the dangerous time, when they are still small enough to move and crash vital organs. If they are large they can’t go anywhere. If they are large they must have started small? Whatever. The doctor said they were dangerous now, which is what the pain was; small stones moving and blocking the bile ducts. Whatever they are, or do. The point being, they have to remove the gall bladder. Wendy hates hospitals, but she is really relieved it is something as straight forward and relatively minor as this. Not that the pain is to be dismissed. Believe it or not Wendy is quite a tough little cookie when it comes down to it. I’ve seen her with a broken arm, with metal rods drilled through her bones, dropped on her head, all sorts of really bad, painful things and she’s never made too much of a fuss. She had an attack on holiday and she was actually crying with the pain. That’s pretty damn bad. By a strange coincidence, our next-door-but-one neighbour had her gall bladder out last week. It’s obviously catching. She reckons they can do keyhole surgery and have you out a few hours later. Got to say it has been pretty damn impressive from the NHS so far. That 111 line gave good advice and called an ambulance. The paramedics did loads of tests and reassured us it wasn’t a heart attack. The A&E did a battery of tests and ruled out all the fatal stuff then sent an appointment for a scan. The scan doctor found the tiny gall stones and told her there and then, now we are just waiting for the operation. Probably the finest thing we have to be proud of, our NHS. Damn Cameron for selling it to his rich mates.   I did that 50 mile ‘run’ last week. Oh dear, oh dear. That was all wrong. What I’d read on the internet about Ultra running (any distance over marathon) was that you ran 20 walked 5 minutes. I was doing it run 25 walk 5. No-one in the race was stopping! Also to walk all hills, first lap no-one did that. So my training was to cock. And it said it was a flat race so I did my training (two runs) down by the canal, perfectly flat. It was up and down hills! I did 35 miles in 6.30, had a 15 minute pit stop to eat and drink before the final lap (I saw someone else quitting while I was there) then set off again. It took me 3.20 to do the last 15 miles! 10 hours 6 minutes in […]

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Rum do-s.

We’ve had quite the eventful couple of weeks. Before I start let me say Wendy is OK. We didn’t know that at the time, though. It must have been Sunday night, I was playing on the internet, Wendy was watching crap on the telly, when she called me. She was suddenly in a world of pain, right in the centre of her chest around the solar plexus (the bit where your ribs meet at the bottom) . She was doubled up with it. She said she couldn’t breathe and if felt like she had a crushing weight on her chest. I thought it was a heart attack. I shit. I gave her some aspirin and looked up the new NHS advice number, then rang that 111 thing. They got talking to her and immediately sent out an ambulance. The ambulance people said it wasn’t her heart (phew!) but had to take her in anyway. I followed in the car. They gave her some serious kick-arse pain killers which settled her after a while. Then the doctor came in and prodded her. She was still very tender around the solar plexus. Apparently this is also the site of the the pancreas. Gail, Wendy’s top-nurse sister,  had warned her of that when we were drinking; that pancreatitis –damage from drinking-  was fatal. If you’ve got it you’re a gonner. So we have been lead to believe, might not be true. Anyway, we were again thinking she was on her way out. They ran a battery of blood tests and it wasn’t her pancreas. We were quite giddy then. We’d both thought she was going to die. Gawd bless the NHS! They sent her away but said she’d have to come back as an outpatient for an endoscopy and scan. By coincidence our nextdoor-but-one neighbour asked Wendy what the ambulance was for, and she has been having the same. Agonizing pain starting in the centre of the chest, in the area of the pancreas as we now think of it, then spreading right around to her back. It’s her gall bladder. She was just about to have it removed. Wendy had another attack four days later, then an even worse one while we were on holiday last week. We rang the doctors the next day to see if they’d got the notification from the hospital and booked and appointment, they said it was unclear who was supposed to be booking the outpatient visits. We were a bit miffed, but what are you going to do? Wendy was going to go to the doctors on Monday and try to get them to sort out an appointment. We were thinking it was going to be weeks of ballache. We got back off holiday today and the hospital have sent her an appointment for a scan for next Thursday! Gawd bless the NHS and all who sail on her! If it it gall stones, which apparently block bile ducts or some other voodoo, they will show […]

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Lakeland fun and frolics.

I’ve had a bit of fun in the Lakes the last two weeks. Friday last week, when I was looking forward to an early dart so I could do some hard training on Saturday, I got to my furthest point from base and broke down. I’d gone under the trailer I was to take and started the ‘tug test’ (where you try to drive forward, twice, to make sure you are properly connected.) There was an electrical type smell and a red light flashed up on the dash saying the clutch was knackered. Ace. I rang work and they got a local mechanic out. He tried to reboot the clutch but it wasn’t having it.He wanted to call out a tow truck to recover the truck and trailer but I told him the route I have to take you physically can’t fit a truck, trailer and tow truck. He left. I rang work again. They said they’d send a driver up in another unit (truck). 3 hours drive. He didn’t have satnav and didn’t know the run. Can you see how my day was going? I told him that he was going to have to take the bloody scary route I have to use as the main road is still closed to lorries. To be sure of my instructions I asked a local driver. I told him I take the A591, as per the traffic office’s directions. “All our drivers go that way.” The driver strongly disagreed. There is a simple route of main roads and dual carriageways that only puts about 10 minutes on the journey. The 591?  “No driver would ever go that way!” Better and better. The thing is though, after crapping myself for the first week, I quite like that route now. It’s demanding but so focusing. This meant I had to talk the rescue driver through a route I’d never travelled. The blind leading the blind. He got there in the end and I drove the unit and my trailer back to Irlam, there to drop him off and carry on to Crewe, then back to Irlam. The one good thing of the shift was one of the Crewe drivers had come into Irlam and they talked him into hanging around. He took my trailer off me. So it was only a 13 hour shift. *muted yay* I went up again yesterday. You’d be amazed at the amount of people on a Bank Holiday who don’t expect an artic and 42’ trailer to be barrelling around the corner on a tiny road. At least I now know what a car and caravan sound like when they are sliding to a stop. There must have been nearly an inch between us on that bend. Big girl’s blouse. It’s amazing how soon you adjust to the tolerances. There is a bit on the A57 (Manchester Road) going to Irlam. Just one corner, that I always hated passing lorries. Now I don’t even think about it. It’s been […]

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