Friday 13 November 2009

48 hours

That's how long I was ill after a gentle lunchtime swim on Wednesday. It was a shame as I was starting to get the hang of things. My breathing was OK, my stroke length was OK (when I concentrated on it). Then I was hit by the urge to stop after about 30 lengths and a splitting headache. This turned into a sickness feeling which didn't any better when I was back at work. So I went home to bed fearing swine flu. Luckily I was only out of it for about 2 days. I guess I was fighting off a virus and the swim gave it some assistance.

Sunday 8 November 2009

Mrs doubts fire

We were over visiting my parents (and doing Shepherd's Skyline - see previous post). It was the Myrtle Park bonfire and fireworks display on Saturday night, but Mrs Noel wasn't keen on keeping the kids up that late. Do you see where I'm going with this tenuous film title link?

Anyway, instead we had a small fire in my parents' garden which was great.

The day after, I went for a very pleasant run in St Ives park (a park in Bingley, West Yorkshire - nowhere near St Ives). Here I saw another two deer. Maybe roe deer (??) but definitely wild this time. Although the deer managed to elude my expert wildlife photography, I did manage to capture an image of this wood elf sheltering in the beard of a forest spirit. Feel free to correct me on this.

Mrs Noel does Shepherd's Skyline


Mrs Noel has been building up her expectations of winning something at every race. This is because she has had a run of about 8 races where this has been proved true. However, we were in no doubt that Shepherd's Skyline was a race where she was unlikely to win anything.


It had been very wet the days before the race and it was predictably cold and windswept as the runners set off. Mrs Noel was a bit nervous about doing a race of this length. I know it's not a long race (only 6 miles), but Mrs Noel doesn't really do races above about 5 miles. She also does no long slow runs in training, so has never build up her stamina. We're two peas in a pod in this respect.


In the end Mrs Noel finished 13th out of 76 lady runners, and was third LV40. She's slowly warming to the idea of doing a bit more stamina work, so watch out for next year!