Firstly, apologies for the hiatus to the two or three people who might have noticed. Most of this was thanks to a PHP upgrade breaking my blog for a while (I really ought to migrate to a static site). I’ll include the past couple of months in this update, although that’s straying slightly from the weeknotes format.
The end of May was a sad time for the local running community, after my friend Ben was tragically killed in a cycling accident. He was extremely well-liked and, to quote the words that were read out at the start line of the Kirton 5, “a great runner and an even greater man”. There were tributes at parkrun and at the Woodbridge 10k, and the funeral saw around 100 runners and 20 cyclists escorting Ben on his final journey, with a celebration of his life featuring dozens of stories of the lives he’d touched.
OK, that’s the emotional bit; now on to the trivial.
Happy to report that my bargain car is still working, and I also finally got the Roadster recovered from Felixstowe (although I haven’t yet got round to selling it). I sorted the Mini’s broken stereo by sourcing a second-hand CD/radio/speedometer combo (yes, it does seem weird that they’re basically an integrated unit) from eBay for £50, and while I had the dash panels off continued the eBay spree to upgrade to the optional “secret compartment” (not secret any more) above the glove box (£19), and a leather steering wheel (£14). It’s nice to be able to drive people to races now I have four seats instead of two, instead of always being the lift scrounger.
I lost my 138-day streak on Wordle.
Running-wise, in the eight weeks since the previous note I’ve fitted in the Friday 5 series and the Woodbridge, Newmarket and Kesgrave 10ks, as well as a “proper” (ie harder than the taster ones I did earlier in the year) orienteering event today. As you would imagine, I got lost a few times, and managed to stretch the “long” route (4.4km) to more like 8.5 (5¼ miles). One of the controls I struggled to find was in a really hilly bit of the woods too, so I got a bit of unplanned hill practice going up and down steps looking for it. I finished in a solid last place, but then I did have to convince them at the start that I had enough experience to do the long/hard course. I was also sternly warned that my legs would get stung and scratched in shorts, but as it turned out the only notable injury – a lightly grazed knee and hand – resulted from taking a turn too quickly on wet pavement.
As usual, my running mileage dropped through Friday 5 season, but I did just barely scrape through 1000 for the first half of the year.
Faye from work got married on Thursday, and looked very happy about it, as you’d expect. Congratulations to her and Jared!
Speaking of colleagues, a weird coincidence finally spurred me to get this blog back up last week. I got a message from one of the apprentices in our team asking whether I used to own kerrybuckley.com (I did, and it was this site’s original home, but lost it thanks to forgetting to update my email address with the registry and not getting a renewal reminder). It turns out she was putting together references for her dissertation, and came across a paper which cited some random nonsense I’d posted back in 2007. Small world.
That’s about all I can remember. Normal service will resume next week.