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

It seems I’ve not done much of interest this week. I’m still enjoying replaying old games on the Steam Deck – I’ve finished Portal and Limbo, got a fair way through Portal 2, and am not doing great at the original Half Life (which I’ve never actually finished), despite playing on easy mode. It’s basically just another thing to play with and avoid doing anything useful with my evenings.

Obviously the running continues as usual, with a track session on Wednesday on top of the usual club training on Tuesday. I managed to make it to Run for Coffee on Friday, and got a reasonably long run in on Sunday in what I was expecting to be torrential rain but turned out to be warm sunshine.

Bank holiday tomorrow, and I really must use it to actually get some work done in the house or garden!

It seems summer’s back again, although there were also a couple of days of getting soaked riding to work earlier in the week.

It looked like one of those wet days was going to ruin Run for Beer again, but after a damp start to the day Wednesday evening turned out to be warm and sunny. This month we ran a circular trail route from the Freston Boot, and Rachel, Heather and I also ran there from Ipswich over the Orwell Bridge too (but got a lift home). In an exciting new development, we also decided mid-run to make a small diversion via Holbrook for a swift half in the Swan. I ordered a pint of what I assumed from the look of the pump label was some kind of dark beer, but was actually cider. Not unpleasant though. Food in the Boot was good, but a bit galling to find out after recovering from the shock of paying over £20 for a burger and chips that they’d also chucked a 10% service charge on top.

After parkrun on Sunday I actually did something useful and strimmed the increasingly long grass and weeds growing in the middle of my driveway. I also removed the grass that was blocking the soakaway at the end of the drive, then removed the grate and pulled out a huge clump of mud and roots. I suspect that may mean less of a puddle up there when it rains!

Another hot day on Sunday (as it seems to be every year) for the Woodbridge 10k. Tough for the runners, but good for the spectators, who always turn out in good numbers for this one. Also good for standing outside the pub for a couple of pints afterwards!

Holly for some reason wanted some more miles for the week, so I talked myself into joining her for an extra (much slower) 10k round the boardwalks once we got back to Ipswich. At least there was more shade from the trees than there was during the race. Also couldn’t resist a quick photo at the infamous hollow tree!

Despite Monday being a bank holiday, this week mysteriously felt really long. On Wednesday I was really struggling to remember that it wasn’t Friday. Also, as predicted, the weather’s gone from “why is it still so cold” to “it’s too hot”.

On Friday I saw some vague chatter about the possibility of seeing an aurora across the UK, but was convinced that it wouldn’t come to anything, or at the very least would constitute a few faint coloured streaks if you looked really hard. I went to bed early, slept well, and woke up to find social media filled with all my friends posting amazing photos from their back gardens. Oh well, that’ll teach me. Mind you, I get the impression it looked far more impressive in photos than in real life, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.

Saturday was the Twilight 5k, a very flat fast race round the Ipswich waterfront, and surprisingly one of the very few local 5k events. It was the scene of my one and only sub-20 time (19:19 – I’m still not sure how that happened!), back in 2019, which after trying for several years would have finally qualified me for the fast wave, but then they switched to just asking for an estimated time, and of course Covid put paid to it for a while. This year the fast wave was tightened up to sub-19, so I think I can give up any hope of a chance to be the slowest of the fast people, but I was kind of hopeful of finally getting under 20 again. I even skipped parkrun in the morning, for the first time in 18 months or so, but alas it wasn’t to be, with a stitch after the first lap putting paid to any hope of maintaining the required pace. I ended up with 20:19, which was a bit disappointing, although it turns out that’s not far off a 75% age graded time, so I can’t really complain.

After a few post-race beers I went home to bed, getting up a couple of times in case the aurora made a second appearance. Predictably, it didn’t, other than a possible vaguely greenish tinge to the sky at one point.

Thanks to some typically poor race-entering admin on my behalf, I then had to get up for the Stephen Williams 10k on Sunday morning. For some reason the weather at this event is always really warm, and this year continued the trend (although nothing like as hot the first year it took place). I managed to drag my tired legs round in just under 46 minutes. I decided that it’s officially summer, and risked opening my sunroof for the drive home, for the first time since mid November when I replaced the one that got stuck half-open. Pleased to report smooth operation, although to be fair I haven’t actually tried closing it again yet.

After last week’s fiasco of leaving my car keys at work, this Tuesday I made sure they were definitely on the kitchen table before cycling to work. I brought my laptop home again, with the intention of sneaking an extra work-from-home day in on Wednesday, but left my jeans in the locker again. This would have been fine except that that (a) I was going out on Wednesday night, (b) I should probably have more than one decent pair of jeans, and (c) I’d just washed the other pair, and they were still drying. I ended up going in to the office after my 9 o’clock customer catchup call on Wednesday (so I could get a 9.5 mile Run for Coffee in first), then left shortly after lunch, having barely spoken to any of the few other people who were in.

The main reason for coming home early was that my Steam Deck was due to be delivered in the afternoon. I’m not a massive gamer, leaning more towards classic and indie games, but even the limited selection that have been ported to macOS has dwindled, with a lot of older titles no longer running on 64 bit machines. The Steam Deck seemed like a good way of being able to casually play the odd game here and there, the price for a factory reconditioned 256GB model wasn’t too bad, and it seems like a pretty nice device so far. I’ve started playing through Portal and Limbo yet again, as well as the original Half Life, which I never quite managed to finish. I also realised that since leaving Twitter I wasn’t finding out about Steam sales or Humble Bundle deals, so I need to start looking out for them elsewhere.

On Wednesday night we went to the pub quiz again, and this time they’d remembered our reservation. We somehow managed to win again, but annoyingly in the process of taking the 50% off our bill that they’d promised for the mistake last time, and also taking off our £50 winnings, I’m pretty sure they managed to do them in the wrong order, and effectively halve our winnings too. I did half-heartedly query it, but he seemed sure he’d done it right. Still, can’t really complain to have paid under a fiver for a quiz, a meal and a couple of pints.

On Saturday I ran to parkrun rather than cycling, then on my way home had to weave through a town centre already increasingly full of Ipswich fans preparing for the game that would see them promoted to the Premiership. I shudder to think what things must have been like in the afternoon and evening after the match.

On Saturday I did the Kesgrave Fun Run, as a sharpener for next weekend’s Twilight 5k. I just about managed to squeeze under 20 minutes, in my fastest time of four times doing this event, but for some reason (probably because it’s a charity run organised by a pub, rather than a serious race!) the course is always about 150 metres short. Still, with a bit of luck and better rested legs, I might stand a chance of getting a legitimate sub 20 next week. In true British fashion, after months of moaning that it was still winter, the sun came out so we deliberately found a table in the shade for a post-race beer.