Pretty cold weather

It was very cold and also very picturesque today. Ideal running conditions, if you've got nice warm kit - which I have.

The snow has nearly all gone now. I can't remember a time when snow has lasted for a month. Normally it's gone in a week. Here's me obeying all the rules of photographic composition while taking a photo of the snow.

The nights are getting longer which augurs well for evening runs in the not-too-distant future. I was out at 4:30 today and it was fine. The longer evenings should also allow me to get some road bike miles in - I'm planning another 90-miler in about 2 months' time.

For those not aware of the winking man. Here's a link: http://www.winkingman.com/pages/where.php

I found another slightly winking could-be-a-man-if-you-have-a-good-imagination, and the sun was behind it which made for a nice photo and an excuse to stop again. Looking at it again I think the man would have to be wearing a very elaborate hat.

This blog is probably playing havoc with my training as I keep stopping to take photos. I'll try to get serious and just post GPS traces in the summer.

On the way back I found these icicles, which also amused me. I thought they looked like the top of some monster's mouth about to bite down.

Two days - two runs

This feat might seem trivial, but it's a big step in the recovery from my seasonal malaise. After running yesterday, I wasn't sure if I was going to go out today as well. But this was decided in Buxton's excellent art cafe in the Pavillion Gardens. After ordering two veggie breakfast for the kids to share with me, it became apparent that they only wanted the egg. So I was forced to eat my own weight in hash browns, veggie sausages, beans, toast and tomatoes. In fact there was so much, we had to give the ducks and pigeons the rest of the toast.

So after this feast, I felt I better do something energetic so went out for a 5 mile run. As you can see, there are still some large dollops of snow about. Especially on footpaths sheltered by walls. It might be gone in a week or so.

Also [news flash] after proudly announcing in my last blog entry that Cloud Nine will be my comeback race, this now clashes with something. So it'll be Wolf Spit (really called Wolf's pit - but that's not as funny) instead; which is the week after.

The long road back to fitness

A few weeks ago the idea of doing a fell race seemed completely alien to me. However, yesterday the FRA yearbook (that shows the calendar of fell races for the year) was delivered. This always gives me a bit of a lift, as I plan which ones I'd like to do.

My first race back will probably be Cloud Nine. This is at the beginning of March, so I've about 6 weeks to get running fit again. So today was my first run of the year. To be fair it was more of a jog, although I can partly blame the snow for that. Here's a photo of Max nagivating one section of snowdrifts.

I plan to work up slowly, but hope to be at about 20-25 miles per week by early March. Fingers crossed I can keep up some sort of momentum now I have a training goal.

Snow fun

The good thing about having kids is that you can spend hours making snowmen and going sledging without people calling you childish. Yesterday "the kids" made two 6-foot snowmen, a snow dog and a snow doorway.

We've also spent about 3 hours sledging in the last few days. If I get to the top of the slope before the kids, I can "test" it for them. I'm hoping the snow persists until a sudden thaw tomorrow, because Mrs Noel needs to get to work on Monday.

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.