Tripping Twig Syndrome

Plenty of news to share with you this time, I know its been a while since my last post – deal with it !

The Great North Run has seen fit to give me two entries for this years event.  In June, I will be running in the 10k event, come September, I will be in the Half Marathon.  I accidentally upped my distance today in preparation for those events.  I left Rupert’s house in Cawston heading across the fields in the general direction of Draycote Water.  I was told it was 5k around the lake and with the extra bit getting there and coming back, I was expecting a healthy 10k hop.

I stopped for an emergency poo at the club house there, and was a tad bemused to see the runkeeper already at 9.1km.  By the time I was done, it was a 14.7km run or close to 10 miles – turns out that Rupert was talking miles when he said 10, I was thinking in kilometers.

Both of those Great North Runs are televised so be sure to tune in and shout some encouragement at your screen – don’t worry what your neighbours think – better still, get them shouting too.

The bird has accepted a job in England so the last few weeks have been spent finding a pad for her to move to – all done now and the move should be complete by the weekend – now all she needs to do is learn to drive on the right side of the road – the left !!

More details will follow in private dispatches.

Lets talk about twig tripping for a moment.  It’s a new phenomenon for me, which is surprising considering the amount of cross-country work I have done in my life.  Twig tripping happens when one of your feet hits the ground and catches the end of a twig or stick.  Because you have hit the end of the twig, the other end gets lifted up off the floor by a few inches.  This lift coincides with your opposing foot moving forward to take the next step when it meets the uplifted end of the stick, normally around where your shoe laces criss cross at the front of your shoe – then you have a problem, one foot on the ground behind you, the other jammed along side it while you have 5 or 6mph of forward motion.  If you are lucky, the twig doesn’t get tangled in your laces criss cross and your foot can slip around and off the end of the twig and plant firmly with a thud as you recover.  Worse case scenario is the twig gets jammed up in the laces and there is no escape other than face planting.

Not only is it catching me out at the moment, but I have seen others having exactly the same problems – which leads me to believe that there is a new breed of twig with the sole purpose of exterminating the human race by face plant or puddle suffocation

Puddle suffocation is a subject I will cover at a later date.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear a new Prodigy song last week and even more happy to pre-order their album for release later this month.  I was saddened to hear that Zane Lowe is leaving Radio 1 but am extremely curious as to what he is going to be doing at Apple. When I left the UK back in 2004, Zane had just recently started with Radio 1 and was shaking up the establishment and bringing a new breed of music to the airwaves.  I did have a blast on Radio 2 the other week too – Jo Whiley.  I remember listening to Jo way back in the early 90’s when she did the ‘Evening Sessions’ with Steve Lamaq – they were responsible for introducing me to Radio Head and the junkie slut tones of Courtney Love and Hole.

Almost time for Top Gear