Blog Wars

I don't know how well it's working - having two bloggers in the same household. There is an inevitable degree of crossover which I'm finding troublesome. What in the hell is the point in both of us blogging about the same things?

So I think I should shift my attention to the in between days - the days where there are no big events and that we do not share. Today for instance.

Today I was free of commitments - well in terms of going to meet the outer world that is. I have a presentation (which I'm grandiosely calling my "speech") to prepare for uni on Wednesday. I've been studiously ignoring the whole thing for some time now but the tension has been building in the hinterland of the mind where things you are ignoring lurk. Today was the day I'd set aside to tackle it. I prepared something a few weeks ago and then shoved it away...so today I thought I'd read it over out loud to get a sense of how daft it was and how long it would take to say.

My neighbour has a pretty  steady relationship with "the drink". I think vodka is her thing. It makes me not worry too much about talking out loud and even having the odd sing-song to myself in the flat on my own. She sets off her smoke alarm from time to time. Another Fray Bentos pie blackens as she falls asleep on her bed watching day time telly. Who is there to judge? Nobody. So we each do our thing.

I thought I would just read it over once and then get out a run. I should have known better. This kind of thing always takes over. Several hours later, still in my pyjamas, several re-writes further on I found that I was starving and I would have to eat again before I went out any run.

About an hour after that I finally got out.

Yesterday's 3000 or so feet of climb and descent had really stiffened up my legs, so I was kind of dreading going out, but to my surprise when I got outside the wind had gone round and was coming from the South and it was nice and warm out there. Unexpected and enjoyable.
When I got to Arthur's Seat I was surprised to find that a lot of other people seemed to be celebrating my day off until I remembered that it is a bank holiday today. Going round Arthur's Seat wasn't all that bad. It was good to work up a sweat. It's been too cold to sweat for months now. On a whim I'd put on a heart rate monitor to go out, for the first time in months. To my surprise and pleasure it was showing some fairly normal numbers...until I started running downhill that is. Then my heart-rate shot up to the high 180s and kept climbing. I stopped just to take my pulse by hand and it wasn't anything like that. Either I have funny electrical currents or the damn thing doesn't work on me. I shouldn't have worn it because it got me thinking about heart rate again and I have now ordered a strapless hrm where you can take your pulse by putting two fingers on the watch thing and also some ECG specific gel which might create better contact between me and the chest strap...

There's a new trail race on the block - the Langholm trail race, which I am, perhaps foolishly, thinking I could use for a training run while Buchanan races his socks off. I don't know if it's a good idea. My last 2 attempts at going to races have put me in a very dark frame of mind - but given that I have no previous with this one and time is moving on and I'm adjusting to how things are for me now, maybe I could just enjoy it...