Jack and the beanstalk

We were visiting a relative in Oxford and all took the kids to see the pantomime. They loved it, and even the grown-ups enjoyed it. It was directed by Peter "spare me the madness" Duncan from Blue Peter. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so I'll try to paint a mental image that captures the whole thing. Imagine a ten-foot tall, demonic, green cyclops singing a duet with a man in drag, while 300 children scream at them. Actually, the more I think about pantomime, the more I realise what a bizarre artform it is.

Meanwhile, as I was sunning myself in Oxford, and escaping from the world's largest hedge maze that's shaped like a cannon, my mate Dave was setting a new me-or-him record in the Percy Pud (10km race near Sheffield). "Oh no he wasn't" I hear you shout. But he was. Had I have run as quickly as I did two years ago I would have been confident that people would have shouted "he's behind you". But they would have been wrong.

Despite Dave's V40 status, he put in his best Peter Pan performance to show there was still Aladdin him. It was very wet (unlike a few years ago when it was snow white on the day), but Dave didn't want to make a fuss in boots, so wore his normal running shoes. He'd left his wife and babes in the wood, but went to see them again afterwards. With this result, I'm quite sure he'll have thought, after waking from sleeping, "beauty!"

The master of disguise !!

"I aint gettin' on no plane you crazy fool!"

It was some friends' joint 40th birthday party, and it was an 80s fancy dress theme. Last time I went to one of these I decided I would go as BA Baracus (Mr T), but Mrs Noel vetoed it and I went as Karate Kid. But instead of looking like the Karate Kid, I looked like a man wearing a woman's dressing gown, perhaps because it was.

So this time I put my foot down, after asking Mrs Noel if this was OK, and got a Mr T dressing-up kit off tinterweb. This was good fun, although it took a while to cover all the bits of skin with brown face paint. Once at the party, it took me a while to realise that some people weren't just being off with me, and that the reason they weren't saying hello was that they didn't recognise me. At least I hope that was the reason. As you can see, my physique is more Peewee Herman than Mr T - I was hoping this would add to the humour.

The best custume of the night was Matt's (aka Snow White), who turned up dressed as a 6ft wide section of the Berlin wall, complete with barbed wire on the top. This was great but it was a bit tricky on the dance floor!

Then on Sunday, Mrs Noel did Famous Grouse. She ran this race last year, 4 months before her 40th birthday. If she had already been 40 at the time, she would have won a bottle of whisky. This was therefore the race that made us both realise Mrs Noel had real potential.

Despite staying up until 1:30 the night before (watching some drunken buffoon try to maintain conversations while starting every sentence with "I pity the fool..."), Mrs Noel managed to finish 5th lady and 1st FV40. So I'm now sipping some of the excellent Pinot Grigio that was the prize.

Famous Grouse is quite a low key race, and is not in the FRA year book. However, it's well worth doing and there's very nice soup and stew in the pub afterwards. It's the last Sunday in November again next year - so add it to your diary.

It's a mud mud mud mud world

My eldest decided we should try to find the wettest, muddiest parts when we went for a walk yesterday. We did pretty well as you can see from the photo.

Then today, Dave came round to test out his road shoes on similar terraine. To be fair, it wasn't that he thought his road shoes were the best bet, but his fell shoes had been hurting and he was up for a run. He's normally a bit lower down the field than I am but he's going well at the moment and I'm not training enough to maintain any kind of fitness.

So, to hinder him slightly I decided to go for the muddiest route possible. This worked well on the slimy grass sections and in the slurry pits that had gathered around the field gates. However, on the rocky tracks he was away. That small spec in the distance is Dave on the deceptive rising track from Three Shires Head.

In future I either need to train more, or persuade him to run barefoot. That way I could also keep up on the stony tracks.

A river runs through it

Continuing my run of film-titled blog entries, I thought this might be fitting for the run up through Back Forest towards Hangingstone. As you can see the 'path' looks more like a stream. This is actually its usual state, but it's a bit worse than normal so worked well for the photos. I was running pretty slowly for this one, as I was still a bit worried that I wasn't over my illness. It was nice to be out, and I don't think I overdid it.
My mate Foz was visiting and walked the same route in the opposite direction. He also took the dog, as Max enjoys walks (even at Foz' fast pace) more than runs (even at my slow pace).

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.

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!