Viewing 26 posts - 1 through 26 (of 26 total)
  • Yet another shameless plea for money.
  • Cougar
    Full Member

    On Sunday the 10th of May I shall be taking part in the Great Manchester Run, a 10km race around the sunny (he said optimistically) streets of Manchester, and I would very much like to help raise some money for a worthy cause rather than merely sacrifice my knees to the devil for naught.

    I’ve chosen to represent the National Autistic Society, because Reasons. I could wax lyrical for a while here with a tearful, heart-rending story of triumph against adversity; the kind of tale beloved of shows featuring Simon Bates or Simon Cowell and actually what is it with Simons anyway, shot in soft focus with plinky music and pictures of sad kittens. But suffice to say this is a charity which directly affects people close to me. You can find out more about the charity’s work at http://www.autism.org.uk/

    Someone on here recently told me that they’d sponsor me so long as I could guarantee it’d hurt, because that’s just the STW way. Well, as ably demonstrated on my inaugural (and only) STW ride out I generally take to any form of exercise like a duck to petrol, and up until recently I thought “gym” was that bloke off Neighbours. Remember that sudden massive hailstorm a couple of days back, where it started raining golf balls? Well, I was out “training” (i.e., mincing impotently along the towpath) in that, and do now at least understand what the Ice Bucket Challenge must’ve felt like. If the day of the race isn’t agony, the next couple almost certainly will be.

    So please, I’d really appreciate it if could donate whatever you’re able to spare. Give to a worthy cause, give to revel in my suffering, give because I’m lovely and could use the encouragement, give because it’s a nice thing to do. Don’t make me get all Bob Geldof on you.

    https://www.justgiving.com/AlanC2015

    Cheers,

    Cougar / Alan.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    (In hindsight, maybe “naked dancing girls” would’ve generated more hits as thread titles go…)

    RustyMac
    Full Member

    Best of luck, does this mean we can have a Fit Friday Sunday on the 10th without worry of the ban hammer????

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middling Edition

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    Cougar
    Full Member

    You think you can just pay me off?

    Well, erm… you’d be right.

    Plenty of other non-running Moderators left though, I expect.

    cinnamon_girl
    Full Member

    Go Cougar go! Good luck, it’s a condition that’s affected a young lad in my family.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Thank you to everyone who’s been so generous so far, it’s appreciated. Everyone else, you’re all banned.

    </gratuitous bump for the daytime crowd>

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    Donated, good luck. Would not have seen the thread without the bump fyi

    Rubber_Buccaneer
    Full Member

    As above, just as well you shamelessly bumped it 🙂

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Cheers guys, appreciated.

    mogrim
    Full Member

    I’ve seen your times on Twitter, you’re not joking about the mincing bit are you? 😀

    Cougar
    Full Member

    😥 On your bike. Er, oh.

    To be fair I’m hardly “match fit” (or indeed, ‘fit’), the only time I ever do any running when I decide to do something stupid like this. I’ve done a handful of half hour “training” runs before the actual race.

    All things being equal I hope to be coming in under an hour and 5 minutes, I’ll be gutted if I’m much slower. My holy grail is to get under an hour, but I expect that’ll require considerably more commitment and the loss of about ten years.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Well, today’s the day.

    If nothing else, it looks like I’m going to get rained on a lot.

    Stoner
    Free Member

    I hope you end up in agony. 😈

    All in a good cause of course.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Next year I’m running for the National Decrepit (Almost) Middle-Aged Geeks Society.

    chakaping
    Free Member

    Done, and I’m sure you are too by now.

    divenwob
    Free Member

    Just spotted,dosh given,well done.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Thank you.

    Came in at 1:01:59 (which isn’t as good as it sounds cos I set off at 10:00…)

    Just over an hour; that’ll do pig, that’ll do.

    Oh, and, ow.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Actually,

    I think those 11th hour donations plus what I have on paper from work, I reckon that’s taken me over £500.

    Sincerely, thank you, it’s truly appreciated and I’m blown away by people’s responses. You’re all amazing.

    Stoner
    Free Member

    He owes us now lads.
    The time will come to cash in this chip.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    It was a dark and stormy night… wait, no, let me start again.

    It was a grey, tepid and slightly breezy day on Sunday, not unlike Summertime in Burnley only without the rain. 35,000 or so (I may have miscounted, they kept moving about) brave souls had turned up to take part in the Great Manchester Run 2015.

    Armed with performance-enhancing drugs (a pack of jelly beans) and legs that photographers could use to set white balance, I took my place in the madding throng whilst Captain Excitable and his trusty sidekick Pink Lycra Girl engaged the crowd a warm-up routine that wouldn’t have been out of place on Breakfast TV in the 80s. And stretch, and streeeeetch, and oh good grief.

    For those who haven’t run since the heady days of cross-country at school, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that pacing is important. Set off too quickly and you peak too soon and then have nothing left, and I’m sure we’ve all been there. Too slowly and, well, you’re too slow. Fortunately there are pace markers running, people who run at a set pace carrying far-too-small discs on sticks so that you can set your speed accordingly.

    I found the ’60 minute’ pace marker I was looking for, by dint of her coincidentally standing right next to me, and plied her with jelly beans. (I contemplated a Fourth Doctor Tom Baker impression but figured she might think I was odd.) She explained to me how her GPS watch worked, but lost beneath the dulcet tones over the PA system of Bouncy McBouncington on the podium shouting “Harder! Faster!” like the young lady on that unlabelled VHS tape you found in your mate’s brother’s bedroom one schoolday lunchtime, all I managed to catch from her explanation was that it had numbers on it. She seemed convinced this was a good thing, and I was already too knackered from the warm-up to argue.

    And then suddenly, we’re away. We all trudge up towards the start line, Pace Marker Girl seems to be determined to give this beardy weirdy the slip but I’m having none of it and tail her through the crowd. A clever pinch point before the start line spreads out the pack of, for want of a better word we’ll say “runners,” the line is crossed and the game is afoot. Afeet. Whatever.

    Almost immediately past the line I realised that the pace marker I’d been bribing with sugary goodness was running far slower than was comfortable for me. I made the executive decision to run at my own pace but keep an eye out for her passing me later, which in hindsight was almost certainly my first mistake.

    Full of vim and vigour and what the Australians might call “spunk,” the first 1km marker turns up surprisingly quickly. “One down already, this is going to be easy” thinks everyone, just before the road starts going uphill for ever.

    In stark comparison to its younger brother, the 2km marker is a bloody long way away, a precedent to be set for the remainder of the run. Already half of the smug gits that left the gate like greyhounds a mile back are reduced to walking. I’m actually getting into a decent rhythm and feeling quite good, probably because I’m ripped off my gourd on sugar and E-numbers at this point.

    3km and comes and goes uneventfully. I pass cheering wellwishers, a brass band umpah-ing happily to itself, and someone murdering Chris Martin (not literally). But coming up to 4km and things are starting to come apart a bit, I’ve run further than this on practice runs but not quite at the lick I’ve been trying to maintain thus far (and not all bloody uphill). My legs are starting to hurt, my throat’s dry to a point where I’m having to take great gulps to try to swallow, and I’m sweating like a small nun at a penguin shoot. Fortunately just past Old Trafford and Clint Boon’s bangin’ choonz there’s a water station where runners can grab a small bottle of water to take a mouthful of before helpfully dropping the bottle on the road to make things more interesting for those behind them. I idly wonder whether the decision to arm runners with bottles *after* passing Boon’s Army wasn’t entirely coincidental.

    5km, halfway, and I’m now into uncharted territory as that’s the distance my training runs have ended. Suitably watered I can at least breathe and swallow again, though the sudden ingress of fluid has given me a monumental stitch in addition to the mounting pain in my legs. Heed the warnings on the Internet kiddies, beware the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.

    The course loops past the Imperial War Museum as it comes up to 6k, I’ve got a knife in my ribs and my quads are now quins. I’m starting to worry that the wheels have come off. I’m talking to myself. “Self,” I say, “shut up and keep running.” I think of the money I’ve raised so far for a very deserving cause, and wonder whether a rambling email about my agony would help to convince the generous people of STW who haven’t yet sponsored me to dig deep and go to https://www.justgiving.com/alanc2015 to donate out of sympathy. But of course, I would never stoop so low.

    7km and I’ll be honest, things are starting to become a blur. I remember passing Batman accompanied by two attractive female partners-in-crime just as someone yelled “come on Batgirls!” which I thought was a bit forward for a family event; two Incredible Hulks – well, two Hulks, at any rate; a girl with a hypnotically bobbing Lara Croft ponytail; an army of men in colourful Lycra whom I was thankful to only have viewed from behind; a pace marker ahead slipping tantalisingly out of view, is that the 60m lass or the 50m bloke? Then there’s a second water station and another gauntlet run of water-bottle hopscotch. My pace has slowed badly, lots of people are passing me, this is officially Not Good. I break pace and walk for a few seconds to buy some recovery time, and the immediate searing pain near my unmentionable regions compels me not to make a habit of doing that.

    About a year after passing 7km comes… anyone? Bueller? I’m channelling The Count as I go past the next marker, “eight, ah ah ah, eight glorious agonising kilometres, ah ah!” I’m in the home straight of both the race and, you’ll be relieved to hear, this email. I think I’m delirious. I’m no longer sure whether I’m seeing people dressed as leprechauns, or actual leprechauns. I’ve lost feeling in my calves, and am monumentally grateful for this.

    I hit 9km. Ah, sweet 9km marker, how I love thee, let me count the ways. I will love it and hold it and pat it and call it George. The adrenaline is kicking in and the road has been going gently downhill for a few hundred years now, and we’re all feeling it. The pace of the pack has gone up noticeably, and with a sudden rush of blood and stupidity I start picking my way up through it. I see there’s a young athletic-looking couple just in front of me, she’s noticeably struggling and he’s shouting words of encouragement, how they’ve got five minutes to complete the race within an hour, whilst running backwards in front of her. I too am spurred on, by happy thoughts of cheerfully stabbing him in the throat.

    At some point we started hitting 200m interval countdown markers, but at this point I’m running on righteous pain and murderous fury rather than numbers. Somewhere around 400m I thought “right, I’m having you, you git” and put the hammer down. I shot past her, then him, then the line. Then just about managed to remain vertical and keep the world in focus.

    As far as I can tell from his cries, Gitface and his long-suffering partner managed the hour with seconds to spare. I however wasn’t quite inside the hour, clocking in at 1:01:59, a time which compelled Gebrselassie to announce his retirement in fear shortly afterwards.

    I’ve been genuinely blown away by people’s generosity and kind words. Thanks for your support, and thanks for reading.

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    Well done, enjoyed the write up and the fact it was you rather than I

    Rubber_Buccaneer
    Full Member

    Reading that was more arduous than running 10k 🙂

    mogrim
    Full Member

    Good write up, far more entertaining than your usual posts. You should do more racing 🙂

    I’d post a link to the write up of my Saturday race, but it’s in Spanish. So I won’t. The race itself was a bit longer than 10k, though.

    Alex
    Full Member

    Good work there. I doubt I’ll read a better line than ‘sweating like a small nun at a penguin shoot’ today 🙂

    Made me laugh. Good cause. I’ll go and donate.

    chakaping
    Free Member

    Very entertaining.

    Come on people – put your hands in your pockets.

    Cougar’s not allowed to tell you this – but every £10 gets you a free swing of the banhammer.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    A free catch to those who don’t, more like. (-:

Viewing 26 posts - 1 through 26 (of 26 total)

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