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.
