This years three peaks & life after weddings.

I have no idea how this years three peaks is going to go. Back in May I was pretty fit then in June I felt I hadn't done all the training I needed to do for A Day in the Lakes. Still, I finished and in a time that showed I was a lot fitter than the year before. Despite that, my recovery period rolled into pre-wedding chaos with only a couple of weeks in between where I actually did some hill training.


At least from that point I had a solid base to take away on honeymoon, not to mention to return to in September when I got back to work.

We did a lot of endurance style training in Scotland which has pretty much convinced me that I will be able to finish the peaks, even if I don't do a good time. 2 munroes in 5 hours and 22km with heavy rucsacs counts doesn't it.

Knowing I wasn't going to have enough time to do a good job of the 3 Peaks, I decided the best way to get back to training through the winter was to set myself targets for the middle of winter, ie. The 'cross nationals which I haven't done for a couple of years, given my own lack of fitness and the risk of being pulled out after 20 minutes. This plan also gave me the opportunity to re implement the bike training I did when I dabbled in road racing without having to worry about too much running and swimming training at the same time.

I've been doing spinning and strength training for two weeks now and I have really enjoyed it. Despite it being short duration training, I discovered last weekend that it is having the desired effect and increasing my training endurance and my cyclo-cross at the weekend flew by in no time. Just as I was trying to decide whether to take a rest week or not, I have been hit by a massive, shitty cold exasserbated by the aspiration of a fly during the race on Sunday which has enforced the rest issue. Sadly it's coincided with a really important yet boring training course which I both really wanted to do but am finding very hard going.

Thursday Friday I intend to rest good and proper.

So with the culmination of good training, bad training and my head being in a pretty good place, it's difficult to know what might happen on Sunday.

I guess this like most other years will be a suck it and see hope I get around kind of event. I really hope there's another one next year.

In other news I have accepted an offer on my house in Wootton Bassett.  It is not what I wanted but from my reaction to the news I can deduce that not having a house in Wootton Bassett is what I want.  It's a lovely little house which I will miss but I don't use it anymore.

I accepted the offer reluctantly but now I am looking forwards to buying a house in Sheffield.  For some reason it feels like the grown up thing to do... despite the fact that the grown up thing to do is to hold onto it until the market comes around.

If I look at it this way:

"I will be the one living in the more expensive house - not Maureen"
Then it all feels OK.

It feels like a forwards step.  It feels like getting the HSBC off my back.  It feels like I won't have to fear that the under-cover rental operation will land me in trouble.  


C'mon Sheffield, come to Trep.

When Shit Comes up with a Really Nice Thing

24 months ago I asked a friend if I could get some poo from her horse - to put on my plants in the Mead.

She said she couldn't guarantee it would be from her horse - the rather royally named William - but probably from a mixture of fine Wiltshire ponies.

The result was one of the most enjoyable after-work evenings of my adult life culminating in a bare back ride on William which left me happy as a 5 year old for days and a bag of steaming shit carried home in a bag in the back of the vanu which didn't even spill or leak, much to my relief.

Sadly William is no longer with us but on Sunday we decided to pay him the homage of using some of his poo on the newly laid lawn and some of the plants we'd planted in the garden including TSK's plum tree that's about to bear its first fruit and could do with a nutritional boost.

TSK peered into the bag first and summoned me quietly. There were baby mice in the bag. Tiny, blinky baby mice.

I rushed carefully through the pile of brambles to look but they were long gone, hidden in the now-perfect flaky manure but as I held the edge of the bag, a sweet, dun brown mammy mouse with wide, staring chestnut eyes stood on the edge of the bag. Her tiny claws held the edge of the bag like the hands of a tree frog cling to a stem. She thrust her soft gossamer whiskers forward in the summer breeze to investigate our presence and observed us like she'd never seen a human before.

We stared back at her like we'd never been so close to nature in all our lives.

We were in her house (not the other way around for once) so we left her to her shit and declared that William's poo would get another year to rot down and quite likely go up for sale with the house and the rest of the garden.

Woot Bass Phase 1

The new shed has arrived. For 7 working days prior to its arrival we slaved. First carefully dismantling the old shed so it could be freecycled

then digging out earth for the new foundations and breaking up an old concrete path so the new shed could have space behind it and not be buried in the neighbour's fence.

Concrete forms were errected and adapted at the tight coner.

I went to the tool hire shop and enquired about a small cement mixer. A batch of new ones was on the way and they'd bring it round. I was relieved since I needed to be in to receive the shed.

I bimbled as much as possible, getting things right, taking down the old arch and its cimbing plants. There was nothing else to do and so I started to mix the concrete by hand.

Before I made the biggest mistake of my weekend (on Thursday) the nice Polish boy arrived with the cement mixer. He manoevred it round the back, ("is not heavy") and set it up for me. I wondered if it was sturdy enough?

"Is OK"

He was looking at me. He wanted to show me how it worked. I wanted to learn how it worked. I realised I didn't have a long power cable. I scoured the house and called the tennant but resorted to nodding at the on/off switches to convince the boy I knew how it works. He drove away. He was probably shaking his head.

With a power cable borrowed from number 75, I continued my work. For the next 6 hours I shovelled agreate and sand and hosed water in the machine, dragging it, as required, across the area to be filled unitil the area was full of sticky wet concrete.

In that timeframe the shed arrived and, offering his hand in marriage, the chaps declared themselves impressed with my work, while offering their opinion at the same time. They declared me too smart to patronise when I questioned his use of the word 'level' when what he actually meant was 'smooth'.

At 3pm TSK's mum arrived and with me still shovelling, I set her about staining the new shed. At 4pm the nice freecyclers came to pick up the old shed which gave me the opportunity to sit down for the first time in 4 hours.

At 7.30, half the slab was finally laid. We damped the top surface flat and wrote our names (and TSK's) in the smooth concrete then went down the pub for dinner.

I spent the next day painting the vast expanse of new walls and base. TSK arrived on Saturday and shovelled and poured concrete with all his might, halving the task of laying the other half-slab. A man came to pick up the cement mixer and declared himself horified at the huge machine they had given me. Still,they only charged me the quoted ammount and tried to give me change of £15.

A week later we assembled the new building. Wall by wall it became a structure. Then the crew of TSK's dad, my work colleague and ex-tenant all appeared with perfect timing to finger-tips and tippie-toe lift the roof into place.

The heavy-duty roof that had TSK and I staggering round the garden like drunks when we handled it on our own, slotted into place like a square block in a square hole with 6 people handling it, leaving me wondering what on earth I invited them all for and realising that I had no beer in.

It took a good hour or two more of felt-measuring and lifting, upward nailing and door hanging, tacking and trimming before we ran out of gusto and returned a week later to glaze the place.

Result is that with a little help from our friends, family, local businesses and freecycle our first extension to a house we're yet to live in is finally complete. As my reward for all the hard work, the latest is that I'll finally relocate my job, move in again and next week, finally get to enjoy the house I picked to be my home.

Nesting

TSK and Trepid Explorer are nesting. Wo woh. Don't get excited, there's no little hippotigermusses on the way but we have a window of 12 weeks in which to plan and rework the house that is Woot before we actually need to move back into it.

I have discovered the power of the Ikea kitchen design tool.

I have ordered a 10x7 garden shed for the end of the path to house our army.

We spent the weekend evicting spiders, pruning the overhanging trees on the rear entrance path to the house and crawling around the kitchen with a tape measure.

Oh what fun I'm going to have.

Here's the before