Kerry Buckley What’s the simplest thing that could possibly go wrong?

I started the week with the “A14 Track Challenge” on Monday (well, I started it with work, but that’s not interesting even by the standards of these notes). This is a friendly 5000m race on the Northgate track between St Edmund Pacers, Stowmarket Striders, Ipswich Jaffa and (for the past two years) Felixstowe Road Runners. Once again I was in the middle race (20–23 minutes), and despite tired legs from racing on Friday night and also running (slowly) on Saturday and Sunday I managed to finish not too far outside 21 minutes. It was a nice sociable occasion with everyone supporting the runners in the two races they weren’t in themselves, and the threatened rain held off too.

The weather was less kind on Tuesday, soaking us on the morning’s run for coffee (we decided to skip the coffee rather than having to stand round dripping while we drunk it). Fortunately there was a dry window in the afternoon when I cycled to the dentist (just a checkup, with no issues). Only just though – ten minutes after I got home the heavens opened in a fairly biblical fashion, complete with hail and thunder. Apparently there were some properly flooded roads down in the town centre.

It was pay letter week, and I was unsurprised to find my apparently valuable contributions rewarded once again with a well-below-inflation 1% increase. Not doing much to dissuade me from thinking about retirement in the relatively near future.

On Saturday, new cables having arrived, I finished putting my old road bike back together. The front shifter still stubbornly resists all attempts to get it working properly, which is basically the reason I stopped riding it back in 2009. Maybe I need to just replace it, or perhaps take it out and treat it to an oil bath to loosen it up (is that a real thing, or just something Luke did to R2-D2?).

On Sunday I went for a slow solo run round all the parks on Ipswich council’s list, plus Broomhill which is missing but was more or less en route (unlike Whitehouse which is miles out of my way and not even a decent park). I stopped at a Co-op at around ten miles to buy a Callipo, then again at about 14 to fortify myself with some late lunch and a pint, before the final stretch up the hill to get home. I met the daft cat that sometimes hangs out on the Wellesley Road railway bridge, but that I hadn’t seen for a few years. It was extremely keen for fuss and attention, and when I tried to leave it kept running alongside me for the first few yards and trying to get in front of my feet.

The heatwave continued for the early part of the week at least. On bank holiday Monday I went for a gentle ten mile trail run with Neil, Jason and Chris, and it was something like 26?C, which made it surprisingly tiring.

I worked at home on Tuesday for some reason that I can’t remember, so missed out on air conditioning but also on what would have been a warm ride there and back. I did ride out to Felixstowe with Neil for club training, but fortunately it had cooled off a bit my then.

I belatedly ordered a new fan for the bedroom to replace the one that exploded while I was using it with my indoor bike trainer (the floor fan I bought at the time is a bit more on the industrial side, and is about ten times too loud and blowy to ever be able to use while I was sleeping). I got a SilentNight-branded one didn’t cost a huge amount and seems to work pretty well – it even has a low-speed sleep mode and a remote control which means no getting up to turn it on/off/up/down during the night.

Every so often I remember that if I want a quick break from work I can go for a walk in the countryside without even having to leave site. I had a wander in the woods and past the old pond on Wednesday, which was very pleasant.

Friday was another Friday 5 race – this time at Framlingham. I was still feeling worn out from the heat, and ended up around half a minute slower than last week. Handily race HQ is at the sports club, which means there’s a bar available for a post-race pint. This was followed on Saturday morning with a very slow parkrun, then on Sunday a bunch of us went for a social jog round the old (and superior) Ipswich parkrun course at Chantry Park. I made some doughnuts for afterwards, which seemed to go down well, but forgot to take a photo of them. On the way back I managed to beat my best time on the infamous Woodville Burn uphill Strava segment – I think the lower gearing on the red bike suits it well.

Over the weekend I finally got round to switching the brake cables on my road bike round to normal UK spec, so I’m no longer in danger of losing control by accidentally braking the wrong wheel. I also started trying to replace the gear cables on the yellow bike I’m slowly reassembling, before realising that the ones I’d ordered had the wrong ends on them. I’ve now ordered a proper full set of actual Shimano cables to do the job properly.

Back the the clubhouse (aka Cricketers) on Sunday evening to sit in the garden for a few beers and some food with the usual crowd, but a more civilised finish time this week, what with everyone having to be at work the next day.

I finished watching Small Prophets, and very belatedly started on Detectorists, which so far seems to share the same gentle humour. Also mostly filmed a few miles down the road from here, in Framlingham.

Before the training session on Tuesday night we had a photo on the beach for some of the people in the club who’d run Spring marathons – apparently our new publicity officer Dom’s going to write something up for the local paper, which is also handily his employer.

Friday saw the first race of this year‘s Friday 5 Series, which as usual was our home fixture at Kirton. The temperature had suddenly rocketed, and it was warm enough just standing round helping with registration beforehand, but it did cool down a tiny bit before the start. I didn’t have too bad a race – faster than the past couple of years, albeit still half a minute outside my PB. If we turn to the old man’s metric of choice though, it was my best age grade over five miles.

Saturday morning was still very warm for parkrun, which ended up being an excuse to sit in the Cricketers garden afterwards for a second breakfast and some breakfast beers. My plan was to treat the breakfast as lunch, then make a pizza as an early dinner, but by the time I’d got home, showered, fallen asleep for a bit and finally got round to making the dough (as well as more dough for some naans to put in the freezer to make the most of firing the pizza oven up), it wasn’t early at all.

I spent some of Sunday resurrecting my old road bike, which has been sitting unloved in the garage for about 17 years. I’d already replaced a broken spoke and more-or-less trued the wheel, and now I’ve also fitted a new crankset to replace the one I cannibalised for another bike, put the brakes and seat post back (I can’t remember why I took them off – they were just on a shelf), and refitted the original seat. I started trying to adjust the gears, but decided I need some new cables first. Once that’s done, it should serve as a “B” bike for when I don’t fancy single speed but don’t want to take the nice one out.

Then it was back to the Cricketers to meet Dave, Glen, Neil, Gill, Rob and Jo for a quiet Sunday evening drink that somehow turned into leaving just before they closed at 1am. Oops.

In what I hope is the final chapter of my water leak saga, I got an email from Anglian Water on Wednesday, saying that they’re doubling my direct debit because “We’ve noticed that you’ve been using much more water than we expected you to since the last time we reviewed your payments”. Hmm, I wonder why that could be. Perhaps it’s somehow related to the massive leak that you (a) caused when you fitted the smart meter, (b) told me I needed to fix, and (c, eventually, after me getting specialists in to trace the leak) fixed. At least it reminded me to fill in the form to claim the “leakage allowance” for the extra usage they charged me for while most of my metered water was slowly draining away under the road. Naturally the form made me fill in all my details, despite being signed into their website, then told to provide two meter readings, no less than 14 days apart. By an uncharacteristic stroke of luck, I did actually have exactly 14 days (plus a few hours) of readings since the leak stopped. To be fair to them, they did respond very quickly, and refunded £181.62, based on my usage since November compared to the average for the past two weeks. I assume they’ll keep charging me extra until they realise that I’m using less than they expected again. Now they have instant readings I ought to check whether it’s possible to just pay at the end of the month for whatever I’ve used, like I do with electricity and gas.

It was Fat Cat meet-up night again on Wednesday, with just me, Rupert and Mel this week. I arrived a bit late having run the long way home from work, so limited myself to a civilised two pints. I passed the friendly sheep again on the run. At least I’m pretty sure it was the same ones – they were a bit less friendly this time, but have had a haircut since last time.

I’ve been watching Small Prophets (interspersed with yet another Buffy rewatch), which is a nice mixture of weirdness and gentle humour. Still a couple of episodes to go, then I have a feeling I ought to check out The Detectorists, which I never got round to watching despite hearing lots of good things about.

A busy weekend, starting by cycling to Kesgrave for parkrun, before nipping home to change and switch bikes before meeting at the Cricketers for a small second breakfast and a pint before what’s become an annual ride in memory of Ben, who was killed in a crash with a car three years ago. We did a loop of just under 50 miles via the Sorrel Horse at Shottisham, the Green Man at Tunstall, the Chequers at Kettleburgh and the Moon and Mushroom at Swilland, before recovering back at the Cricketers. I was definitely glad to have decided to use my nice bike rather than riding fixed gear as usual.

Then on Sunday it was the Woodbridge 10k – a definite candidate for the best race in the local calendar. I wasn’t expecting much after Saturday, but somehow managed (I think – the results aren’t out yet) to just squeeze under 45 minutes, which is quicker than last year. Maybe because unlike most years it wasn’t boiling hot.

Bank Holiday Monday saw the traditional open-topped bus parade for Ipswich Town’s promotion to the Premier League. I’m not bothered about football, but was tempted to head down to meet Dave, Sally, Rob, Jo and Neil for a quick glimpse before what I expected to be lunch and a few pints in the Cricketers. As it turned out, this dragged on into the evening, followed by an additional stop at the Fat Cat on the way home. Even Neil, who until recently was rarely seen drinking more than the odd half, ended up having five pints – apparently the most he’s had since being a teenager.

Despite that, I managed to get up and cycle to work on Tuesday, then also cycle to Felixstowe and back for club training in the evening. I went out for a solo trail run on Wednesday evening (mostly missing the rain, but still getting soaked by oil seed rape plants either side of a narrow path, which were like wet sponges), then on Thursday evening I jogged out to Specsavers to finally pick up my latest pair of reading glasses (technically VDU glasses, which makes them free from work), and to vote on my way home. Sadly Suffolk County Council fell to reform, but Ipswich is still Labour-controlled for the moment.

I’m beginning to think the walkway outside our office may be cursed. When it was first built they (allegedly) put the decking planks on upside-down and it was almost immediately closed because it was slippery when wet. Then a few years later the rotting wooden surface was all replaced with plastic, and some time after that the steel frame was found to be rusting away, and last year the whole thing was removed and replaced with a raised concrete path.

This week we had an email saying the walkway is “temporarily closed due to an outbreak of caterpillars”.

Kafka is alive and well in our corporate IT processes. I got an email “escalating” the fact that I hadn’t reviewed registrations on the email relay service. Unfortunately (a) the “review” only allows you to confirm that an entry is still required, not indicate that it isn’t; (b) it says it’ll be disabled if I don’t review it by three weeks ago; and (c) because apps have four kinds of owner, and I’m all of them, the “escalation” involved CCing me three times on the email.

After Run for Coffee on Friday and parkrun on Saturday (obviously), I ran the Stephen Williams 10k on Sunday. I didn’t get too bad a time, what with it not being a fortnight after a marathon (last year) or the morning after the Twilight 5k (the year before). I still just about had enough energy to go out and cut my front hedge in the afternoon, before people start complaining about it encroaching on the pavement again.

Finally, we finished the week the way we started it, with dinner and slightly too much beer at the Cricketers again.

Sadly I lost Nobby cat this week. He’d been a bit frail for a while (he was about 18 – not sure exactly because he adopted us as a young cat in 2008 and stayed when his official owners moved away), and on Wednesday he lost interest in food and looked very sorry for himself. By the time I got home from work he was just lying on the bed. I was going to take him to the vet on Thursday morning, but he died at some point during the night. At least it seems like he went fairly peacefully, and in familiar surroundings, rather than spending his last few days on a drip in a cage at the vet’s.

The summer race season kicked off on Sunday with the Ipswich Twilight 5k. Like last year I was in the 17–21 minute wave, with a self-assigned target of just staying inside 21. Last year I managed 20:56, and this year … 20:55! Albeit this time I’d had three weeks to recover from a marathon rather than six days. After watching the ridiculously quick runners in the sub-17 wave we predictably headed to the Cricketers for a few too many beers in the garden.

I succumbed to temptation and bought another fixed-gear bike off eBay. It’s a conversion of an Italian road bike from, at a guess, the early 90s, and seemed like a bargain at around £100 plus delivery. It looked great when it arrived, and seems to work well based on a couple of rides. In an ideal world the frame would probably be a fraction bigger, and I might put a smaller sprocket on to up the gear ratio a bit, but it should make a decent summer commuter while I (in theory) do some maintenance on my usual purple machine.

It looks like I might have finally got to the bottom of my water leak, after a couple of months (95% of which time was admittedly me procrastinating).

Anglian Water contacted me in February after fitting a smart meter, to tell me that it was showing a constant flow of about 15 litres/hour (it’s dropped a bit since), indicating a leak which I needed to get fixed. After doing some investigations myself, which also involved clearing out the impromptu jungle which had colonised the passage round the side of my house, I admitted defeat and contacted a company through Checkatrade. They claimed to do leak detection, but just sent round a normal plumber who looked around, confirmed what I already knew, and said they’d need to send their leak specialist instead. They clearly didn’t fancy the job, because that’s the last I heard from them and they stopped replying to messages.

I was going to contact the company that came and looked at my kitchen hot water pipe leak, but when their website said that most people’s home insurance includes trace and access cover, I thought I’d better check. Turns out they were right – I knew I wasn’t covered for repair to external pipework, but finding the leak was covered.

The insurers arranged for a different company to send someone round, and they spent all of Friday morning running tests and pumping gas through the pipes, before eventually pinpointing the leak to … the smart meter. Which means that after all that faffing it’s not my problem, it’s Anglian Water’s. Now I’ve told them that, I assume they’ll send someone round with a spanner and a bit of PFTE tape and fix it in five minutes.

The annoying thing is that there was clearly water in the hole where the meter lives, but I (and both lots of plumbers) had assumed that wasn’t the leak because there was no sign of movement and the level seemed constant.

Kesgrave parkrun for a change this week, which is a lot flatter than Christchurch Park where I normally go. I didn’t really have any excuse to take it easy, so actually put a bit of effort in for once. I thought my time was OK-ish when I finished, but when the results came out it turned out to have been my quickest on that course, and my highest ever age grade, which is encouraging (especially with the Twilight 5k coming up next weekend). I knew I wouldn’t be running on Sunday, so went back out after lunch for some easy trail miles down to the river.

On Sunday I got up at 4am to get the coach down to London for the marathon, although fortunately this year I was only supporting rather than running! After dropping off the runners, we popped into a Wetherspoons for those who hadn’t brought breakfast with them to buy some (and to wait until 9am when they started serving beer!), then found a spot just past the Cutty Sark to watch from. We saw the leaders come past on their way to the historic double sub-2, then waited for our friends Haydn, Dave, Maria and the two Sams to come past. At that point some stayed on to wait for other club runners further down the field, but we didn’t have a great view there and the rest of us traipsed under the Greenwich foot tunnel to a quieter section in Millwall. From there we saw the same FRR people again, almost missing Maria entirely but actually managing to get a decent photo of Dave. Unfortunately we were standing by a subtle speed bump, and we saw a woman fall down but get up mostly unharmed, then a Belgian chap went down much harder and smacked his head on the ground. We had Nic (a retired midwife) and Ali (a nurse) with of us, so they helped until the St John Ambulance people arrived. They cleaned him up a bit and whisked him off to the medical station – we all hoped he’d be able to carry on, but I checked his number in the results later and it looks like he was forced to retire, which must have been an awful disappointment. We then braved the crowds and public transport to get to Trafalgar square to meet Dave and hand over his post-race beers.

Typically, after the ridiculous winds on Sunday we woke up to a lovely still day on Monday, which would have been perfect marathon weather. After breakfast and tidying up we left the Airbnb and headed home. The roads were pretty quiet apart from being held up by a couple of tractors for a few miles, although as usual getting back across Ipswich seemed to take almost as long as the rest of the journey (I think we had to stop at all but one of the seemingly endless pedestrian crossings).

I managed to drag myself out for a very slow jog round the block to loosen my legs up (and to avoid leaving my year-to-date mileage sitting on 598.9), then cycled into town with Rob, Jo, Dave, Sally, Neil and Gill for dinner at the Marinero Lounge and a fairly inevitable few extra pints at the clubhouse. Fortunately the Real Ale Monday to Wednesday deal softened the blow of returning from the land of £2.20 pints to the Cricketers’ £2.99!

Back to work on Tuesday, then cycled out to Felixstowe with Rob, Jo, Dave, Neil and Ryan to show off our marathon T-shirts and/or medals before ignoring the actual training session in favour of food, beer and watching Ipswich Town lose to Portsmouth at the Grosvenor. The vague plan had been to put our bikes on the train for the journey home, but once Ryan realised there were no trains between 9.28 and 11.01 everyone was convinced to ride home too. Somehow this all got a bit competitive, with Strava telling me I had three segment PRs (the tailwind might have helped).

No respite from the beer on Wednesday, as it was time for the regular [ex-]BT meet-up at the Fat Cat, this time featuring Anders, Rupert, Tony and Dave F. Then on Thursday I finally had a free evening to relax (and to go to the supermarket to stock up my dwindling supplies of food).

I’d just finished my lunch on Friday when my phone buzzed with a reminder that my MOT test was in one hour, a fact I’d completely forgotten. The car sailed through for another year – probably not surprising as it had only travelled 1,650 miles since last year, which is slightly less than I’d run in the same time period.

I ran down to parkrun on Saturday, early enough to tag along with the course inspection again, then stopped off at the Cricketers (again) with the gang for a second breakfast. Then on Sunday I went out for a few miles in the sunshine round the Fynn Valley. No sign of my friendly sheep, but its friends seem to have taken over the bench in the field.

Marathon week! A fair-sized gang of us from FRR travelled up to Boston (Lincolnshire, not Massachusetts) for the festival of running, with most of us running the marathon and Steve the half. A bunch of us had booked an Airbnb close to the town centre together, and went up on Friday afternoon. We were conveniently close to the Moon Under Water, so headed there to meet up with some others who were staying elsewhere for dinner and slightly more pints than intended. Then on Saturday we did a leisurely parkrun before some of us heading back to the pub for second breakfast/lunch (but no beer this time). Then we all piled into the Stump and Candle, so everyone (even Glen and I, with our lack of interest in football) could watch the Ipswich/Norwich derby. Some beer was drunk, but only Guinness 0.0 this time. Most of us couldn’t be bothered with cooking, so returned later to the Spoons a third time for dinner.

The race started at 8am, so there were lots of early nights had on Saturday, all hoping the weather forecast would miraculously change from force 5 winds with force 7 gusts (it didn’t). Then an early start for everyone to get breakfast and make all those nervous extra trips to the toilet, but at least we only had a five minute jog across the river to the start line.

I started with Holly, and we ran the first 23 or so miles together, which made for a much more enjoyable experience. The initial 11 or so were with the wind behind us, but then once we’d started heading back in there were some pretty brutal headwinds in places. Fortunately the route was fairly winding, so it wasn’t just a solid half marathon into the wind, and I think most of us managed to keep the pace up much better than we’d expected. I certainly did a better job in the later stages than I did last year in London, when the problem was heat rather than wind. Holly’s knee started hurting with about three miles to go, then she got a stitch, and insisted I shouldn’t wait. At that point based on my average pace I was still more-or-less on target for my original optimistic 3:30 target, but that was clearly never going to be possible with the majority of that average made up of the early miles on fresh legs with a tailwind. I knew I was pretty much guaranteed a PB by that point though, which was motivation to try not to slow too much, and I even found myself thinking “well this proves I should be able to go under 3:30 next time if the conditions are better” in the last mile, which is a bit early to have already gone back on the traditional “never again”! I wasn’t far off, crossing the line in 3:31:07 (Holly wasn’t that far behind in the end). A surprising number of us came away with PBs, and Neil and Ryan both had great marathon debuts. Then, once everyone was in, those of us who weren’t travelling home on the day hobbled back for showers and yet another visit to the pub – this time with no reason to limit the number of beers!

A quarter of the way through the year already, which seems almost as unlikely as being more than a quarter of the way through the century. It’s beginning to almost feel like Spring too, and the lighter evenings are nice despite my general antipathy towards daylight saving time.

I watched the last of the Columbos. I hadn’t realised that the ”season 10” specials lasted sporadically until 2003, meaning that despite starting in 1971 the show almost outlived Buffy.

Another short work week, with Monday and Tuesday off as well as the bank holiday on Friday. Not that I got many useful tasks achieved in my time off, naturally! I did manage to accidentally contribute to reducing energy use by (a) making a flask of coffee for work on Thursday with cold water after forgetting to boil the kettle, and (b) having marmalade on bread instead of toast on Saturday after absent-mindedly buttering it after slicing instead of putting it in the toaster.

First week of marathon taper, so less running this week, but that did include the Sudbury Fun Run on Good Friday. I managed to be only one second slower than last year (Or a 0.58 percentage point improvement in age grade, as us old folks like to say).

I made hot “cross” buns again, for the nth year in a row. I didn’t think they came out as well as last year’s – I used the Dairy Book of Home Cookery recipe, forgetting that last time I followed one I’d found online – but they went down well with everyone after Friday’s race and parkrun on Saturday.