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

I thought the back tyre on my bike felt a bit soft going to work on Wednesday, then when I went to come home it was very flat. I pumped it up and it got me home, so I lazily thought it was a slow enough puncture that I could leave fixing it until the weekend. On Thursday morning it was very clear that that was not the case, and I turned back after a few yards to drag my rarely-used mountain bike out, top up the air in its tyres and swap some lights over. I worked at home on Friday as usual, but still haven’t got round to fixing the puncture, had to use the backup bike a couple more times, and now the weekend’s over. Let’s see whether I can remember to do it tomorrow before I have to head into the office again on Tuesday!

On Saturday I travelled down to That London for Frank Turner’s Show 3000 at Alexandra Palace. Because the last train back to Ipswich is too early this entailed driving to Colchester, then getting the train into Liverpool Street and another train out to Ally Pally. I was mildly paranoid that something would go wrong (especially as both the train and gig tickets were only on my phone), but it all worked out OK. I’d bought a ticket that was limited to a specific train, and when I got to the station the boards were showing it as cancelled, but it turned out that I’d allowed so much extra time to get there that rather than waiting half an hour I was able to just jump on the earlier service.

I hadn’t really appreciated quite how big the venue is, but the size of the crowd descending (ascending) on it soon made it clear just how many people were going to be there (pretty sure it was sold out, at 10,000 capacity). I got in the queue half an hour before the doors opened, which allowed me to get pretty close to the front, and because I was driving I didn’t bother getting a drink, which negated any need to fight my way to the toilets and back.

It feels like I normally rely on Frank Turner shows to discover new bands, as he always does a good job of picking support acts, but this time I’d seen both of them before. I’d somehow failed to find out who was supporting until the day, and was pleased to discover it was The Meffs and The Lottery Winners. I’d seen the former in The Smokehouse, a venue that would fit in its entirety several times over on the Alexandra Palace stage, and the latter supporting Frank in Ipswich a few years ago, and at a couple of Pet Needs-related events in Colchester.

Having been on my feet for around six hours (at times in a pretty lively crowd), at least the journey back passed without incident, although it was well after 2am by the time I finally got home. Then in a piece of less than optimum timing, after four hours or so of sleep it was time to get up for the Tarpley 20. I wasn’t expecting much (in fact my ankle was so sore when I got up that I almost started to wonder whether I could even finish it), but thanks to company all the way round from Neil (usually way ahead of me, but recovering from injury so taking it easy) I made it to the finish and even managed a slight negative split. Admittedly it was the slowest I’ve completed the course (around 30s slower than my first time back in 2000 just before the world ground to a halt), but my average pace was bang on my marathon target, so all I have to do is hang on for an extra 10k (presumably after a more restful day before) – how hard can it be?

Oops, late again!

Starting to get a bit fed up with the seemingly endless stretch of just-above-freezing temperatures we’ve been having. We haven’t even had any proper wintry precipitation, apart from about five minutes on Saturday which happened to coincide with me walking half a mile down the road to get a lift to Felixstowe!

I squeezed a short trail run in on Wednesday evening before heading to the Fat Cat for another pleasant evening shooting the breeze with Rupert (current boss), Joe (previous boss) and Mel (boss before last). It was a lot muddier than I expected (the run, not the pub), including a field that looked like it had been ploughed five minutes before I got to it. It got darker a bit quicker than I’d expected too, but despite both those factors I managed to stay upright. I also came across a sign in the small area of woodland that had unexpectedly disappeared last year, saying that it had been turned into cricket bats. The area now features some new willow saplings, which will apparently be ready to harvest in 15–20 years’ time.

Because it was the last round of the Suffolk Winter League cross country on Sunday, ruling out a long run at the weekend, I decided to join in with Thursday’s Run for Coffee, but to tack on some extra miles. I basically did a lap of more or less the usual route, met the people who start in town, ran another lap, stopped for coffee, then added an extra loop to my run home. I’ve been working at home all week on account of not being able to shake the cold I’ve had for nearly a fortnight, so I was still able to start work at 9am, although that did entail setting out at 5.30. My general tiredness through the day suggest that it might not have been my best ever idea!

Saturday was the FRR AGM and awards night, which was pretty sparsely attended. Nothing much happened, and obviously I didn’t win an award, although a few speedier friends did.

The aforementioned cross country was the Bungay event, which this year was on a new course at Woburn Farm in Corton, on the other side of Lowestoft (counting this side as south rather than west, otherwise it would have been a bit wet). It was two laps on mostly fairly dull field-edge tracks, but with one short section that was normally used by BMXers, with a rollercoaster of short sharp up-and-down mounds.

I woke up in the night on Monday (or possibly Tuesday, but you know what I mean) with the kind of sore throat that means you’re definitely about to get a cold, and sure enough it’s been progressing through various symptoms all week. Mostly just a cough left now, but knowing me that could last for months. To be honest if lingering coughs are part of some kind of demonic pact I don’t remember making to never get ill in any other way, I’ll take it. I hope that’s not tempting fate!

As I turned right at the staggered crossroads at the end of my road on my bike on Tuesday, an inattentive SUV driver decided not to bother looking in my direction, and drove into the side of me. Fortunately fairly slowly and there was no real damage done (to me or the bike – I hope the car picked up a couple of scrapes), and I didn’t think it was worth taking it any further than an admonishment to look where they were going next time.

I organised a code retreat at work on Thursday. Somewhere around thirty people turned up, and I think it went reasonably well. These events always remind me though that outside of the little bubble of our team, and despite people like me banging on about it for a decade or two, hardly anyone seems to actually practice TDD. Oh well, their loss I guess.

Having just about made it through the first two “days” (we’re actually doing one of the book’s day sections every fortnight) of Elm in Seven More Languages in Seven Weeks, we made the executive decision to skip day three and jump into Elixir (which is a bit of a busman’s holiday for me). The current version of Elm is totally different to the one covered by the book, and it seems quite tricky to get hold of an old enough version that still includes signals, which are core to a lot of what’s described. It’s a shame someone hasn’t rewritten the chapter at some point since 2014 when the book first came out.

I whiled away some time on Saturday adding age grade scores to the spreadsheet where I keep my race results, which involved copying a sheet from the official tables, then writing a pretty gnarly function to cross reference the race date (to get my age), distance, open standard time and age correction factor to work out the percentage. All to make me feel better by being able to claim that – even though I’m getting slower – I’m arguably still improving if you take into account the fact that I’m an increasingly old man!

Bury St Edmund (Pakenham) cross country on Sunday, which was much drier than it was last year, even if the weather on the day wasn’t as nice. I got round in a not altogether terrible time, given that I’m still ill, but nothing special either.

February already, eh?

Another double club session week, with the normal one on Tuesday night supplemented by the monthly visit to the track the next evening. I treated the latter as just a social event though, with a handful of us – who were either nursing niggles or thinking of the half marathon coming up at the weekend – jogging round the outside of the track while everyone else flew past at speeds varying from a bit faster to outrageously fast. Then we followed what seems to have become a tradition and headed to the pub for a few pints afterwards.

I ate the last piece of Christmas cake on Wednesday, so it’s officially not a special occasion until Easter.

On Saturday I headed to St Stephen’s Church – a whole 1.7 mile bike ride away! – to see the final night of Pet Needs’s acoustic tour, supported by Ben Brown again. Both enjoyable as ever, and it’s a great venue too, which I’d not been to since it was promoted from its previous role as a tourist information centre. There were a couple of cool looking young lads in front of me, then when the band came on they rather sweetly held up a sign saying “We love you Mr Sharman!”. Apparently Ryan the bassist used to be their teacher.

I’d been slightly dreading the Great Bentley Half on Sunday – the first proper road race since November, and the idea of running 13 miles at pace seemed optimistic. It went OK though, and I ended up finishing in 1:35:28, which is a couple of minutes quicker than last time (but nearly three minutes slower than my 2019 PB on the same course). I think most of that was thanks to Holly and Maria, whose company I enjoyed on the way round, which relied on me managing to keep up with them!

One thing I forgot to add last week was the Big Garden Birdwatch, which I did on Saturday. My total haul was five sparrows, five blackbirds, three starlings, two (for joy) magpies, two blue tits (no sniggering at the back) and two redwings. Also a fox and a squirrel, which I’m told don’t count.