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

On Monday we held another developers’ unconference at work. It seemed to go down well, with a wide range of topics discussed, and lots of biscuits eaten (by me, at least).

It was another tough week of running, with the usual Tuesday evening session followed by the club’s annual social Two Rivers race on Wednesday. This involves everyone setting off from Landguard Fort at staggered times based on their best recent race times, and choosing our own routes to Felixstowe Ferry (just under five miles away). I was trying to back off slightly with Twilight (see below) coming on Friday, which meant I ended up finishing second from last (and only not last because I overtook someone running the last bit with his five-year-old son!). Thence to the pub for some refreshment, which ended up being only in liquid form because I failed to order any food before the kitchen shut.

After a brief respite (apart from cycling to work) on Thursday, Friday was the Ipswich Twilight 10k. Much dryer than last time, and I was slightly slower, but managed to pull away from Holly towards the end, to make up for her doing the same to me last year! A bunch of us retired to the Cricketers afterwards, where we ended up working round very slow service (the Wetherspoons app had apparently broken, so everyone had to go to the bar like in the before times) by lining up several pints at a time. We did manage to leave a little before 1am though, which is marginally earlier than last year, and they hadn’t quite reached chucking-out time.

Two conversations from Wetherspoons on Friday …

One, as we were going in (having been directed away from two of the entrances, presumably to funnel everyone past their crack security team):

“What’s in your bag?”

“Running stuff.”

“No knives or anything sharp?”

“No. Do you want to look?”

“No, that’s fine.”

Two, from a woman ordering at the bar:

“Can I have a treble [something]?”

“Sorry, we can’t serve trebles.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just policy.”

“OK, then I’ll have two doubles.”

“That’s fine.”

I managed to turn up early for parkrun on Saturday, and ran round very slowly, then popped over to JJ’s for a barbecue in the afternoon. Definitely didn’t feel up to a long run on Sunday, but did manage to get out for a very slow, very warm half-dozen miles.

I finally finished Portal: Revolution on the Steam Deck (with a couple of hints, and after reverting to an earlier save in the final level to give myself a bit more time to get to the last button before the death timer ran out). It’s extremely impressive for a free fan mod. I suppose I have to find something new to play now, although I might also sort out getting some old games on there under an emulator.

This Tuesday was what has become the annual summer club get-together at Paul’s field instead of the usual club session. Basically 40 minutes running round a fairly hilly circuit on grass, followed by some food, beer and chat.

No rest on Wednesday, with a track session in the evening. I’d intended to take it relatively easy, with a race coming up on Friday, but as usual ended up pushing a bit too hard and wearing myself out!

Friday was outrageously warm, and I ended up driving out to Thetford Forest on my own for the Wibbly Wobbly Log Jog after the people I’d been planning to car share with decided they couldn’t face it. Apart from being a bit of a trek to get to, it’s a good event that I haven’t done since 2019 – around five miles on tracks and windy paths through the forest, with the odd bomb hole thrown in. The temperature was still in the high 20s when we started, and I set off at an optimistic pace, given my tired legs. I felt like my speed was slowly reducing to a crawl as the miles passed, but not many people seemed to be passing me, so I think the heat was getting to us all. I ended up finishing 24th out of 300-odd runners, which was a pleasant surprise.

On Saturday I was absolutely convinced I was going to be early for parkrun, right up to the point when I looked at my watch as I cycled across the park and saw that it was 8.57. Then because of the warm weather more people had cycled, so I had to lock my bike a bit further away than usual, and as I got there I heard the dreaded “Are the timekeepers ready?”. I would have made it to the start line (barely) in time, but they accidentally started two minutes early!
My plan had been to run round gently with Holly as usual, but starting from behind the tail runner I picked the pace up a bit, aiming to catch her up. By the time I finished I’d made up 179 places, and also established that she wasn’t actually there.

I decided to give the long run a miss on Sunday, and did a very small amount of house and garden work, including trimming the face of the rather poorly-looking hedge along the driveway. I was going to do at least some of the top too, but my trimmer started misbehaving. I’d been thinking about getting some rechargeable garden tools to replace my increasingly temperamental (and noisy) petrol ones, but last time I started researching online I got sidetracked and accidentally bought a cheap scythe on eBay. I haven’t had much luck trying to use it so far – mainly because it’s not great quality and was extremely blunt. I spent a while trying to sharpen it today (and cut my finger, which I suppose is a mark of some kind of success), but it’s not quite there yet. If nothing else I suppose I can combine it with a black cloak for a somewhat hazardous hallowe’en costume.

I managed to put a small scratch on the lid of my Macbook by dropping my work Macbook on it, which is one to be filed very much in the category of “first world problems”.

My boss’s boss was over from India this week, which meant another work meal on expenses. We went to Takayama, which has changed location since I last ate there, but still appears to do excellent food.

I’m still semi-obsessively practicing with my (not Rubik’s brand*) cube when I’m waiting for things or don’t have the energy to do something more useful, and this week I managed my first sub-30 second solve. I also briefly had all my averages (latest 5, 12, 50 and 100) under 45s.

Run for Coffee on Wednesday was mainly notable for this incredibly sympathetic selfie from Calli after Nicola had fallen over (don’t worry, we’d all checked she was OK by this point!)

Wednesday evening was pub quiz night again (with our team featuring three of the people from the above photo), and we won again! It was very quiet, what with the England football-kicking contest happening at the same time, and most of the teams that usually give us a run for our money weren’t there. It’s a good job we only go every ten weeks though, or it might get embarrassing – I don’t think any of us are individually that knowledgable, but we seem to cover a wide range of subjects between us.

The Friday 5 series may have finished last week, but there was still a five mile race on Friday evening – the Brantham fun run, which is actually a pretty tough course, with an energy-sapping hill in mile 4. The weather felt more like March than July, which was OK for running in but a bit chilly for the standing around afterwards (the logistics mean cars can’t leave until the runners are all in, and I’d given Holly a lift and she was the second female finisher so we had to wait another quarter hour or so for the trophy presentations!).

No racing on Sunday this week though, so time for a gentle 14 mile(ish) plod in the Fynn Valley. Much warmer today, and the nettles were starting to invade some sections of the paths (but not anywhere close to the nightmare a few weeks ago).

I’m posting this before the final of the football thing, so by the time you read it it might have “come home” – I assume I’ll be clued in to how it’s going by the shouts emanating from the neighbours again.

A child just knocked on my door offering to sell me some kind of energy drink for £1.50 (apparently it’s £3 at the local corner shop). Very odd. Perhaps he was a burglar.

*it’s a “QiYi X-Man Tornado V3M Pioneer UV Magnetic Magic Speed Cube Flagship Version”, if anyone cares!

I realised that I hadn’t taken any time off since the beginning of the leave year in April, so I booked off the second half of this week – that uses up half of the five days I carried over from last year, which I suppose is a start. As usual I had a vague notion of getting all sorts of useful stuff done, but all I really ended up doing was cutting back the foliage on the back of the house (and the brambles on the patio that were in the way).

I thought about staying up to watch the election results come in (having gone to bed too early to see the iconic ‘Portillo moment’ in 1997), but realised that there would be a really boring stretch until around 3am, and also that there was no way I’d be able to put up with watching the coverage on any of the TV channels. I ended up just watching the exit poll announcement, and switching off when Laura Kuenssberg came on. I woke up at around 4am for long enough to check my phone and ensure I wasn’t in for a 2016-style shock. Nice to be rid of our embarrassment of a Tory MP at last, and a surprise to see Suffolk Coastal go red too.

The Friday 5 season came to an end with Great Bentley this week. It’s normally a warm one, but looked like it could feature heavy rain this year, with quite a downpour as we set off to drive down there. Fortunately it cleared to just a bit of drizzle for the race. It ended up being my quickest of the series, but still slower than last year. It occurred to me that the last time I competed under a Labour government (having been far too lazy during the Blair/Brown years) was probably a junior school sports day obstacle race, when Callaghan was in Downing Street!

After a gentle parkrun on Saturday, it was straight back to racing on Sunday, with the annual Ekiden relay event. This sees nearly 200 teams (we’d entered 11 from FRR), each running a marathon distance split into six legs of 7.2, 5, 10, 5, 10 and 5 km. It’s always a great social event, with loads of club gazebos lining the middle part of the 2.5km lap with everyone who’s not currently running supporting those that are. It looked like the weather was going to be wet, but as it turned out it was – apart from a couple of heavy showers – largely a warm sunny day as it seems to be every year. I ran leg B (5k) for the club’s male supervets (over 50) team, and we managed second place in our age category (with me being the slowest component of our overall time!). We were soundly beaten by our over 40 team this year though, having managed to go slightly quicker than them in 2023. After a bit of recovery I then did a 10k leg for one of the two social teams that we’d entered as the coffee runners, which unsurprisingly I ran even slower. We got completely soaked by another downpour while cycling home, and eschewed the traditional pub stop, but a few of us did head back into town for a curry after drying off and resting for a bit.