The Fibroid Diaries, Part 2

It's two weeks ago tomorrow that I was operated on and, as one would hope, my body is healing more by the day.

I would have been off the painkillers for a week, if it hadn't been for a two-day migraine last Wednesday/Thursday that knocked me for six (and against which the painkillers did very little, but I took them in hope). I've also now finished my course of blood thinning injections and Mick had a thoroughly frustrating time trying to dispose of the sharps box and left-over injections in the proper manner (why leftovers? Because apparently it's not possible for the hospital pharmacy to take three fully packaged injections out of a box of ten and give them to someone else, or deploy them within the hospital, so I had to take a box of ten, with instructions to only use seven).

My scope and range of physical activity has also expanded greatly, although still cautiously and in accordance with guidelines. I found a leaflet from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (who surely know what they're talking about in these matters) that said that I should build up my walking and that '30 minutes after 2-3 weeks should be achievable for many women'.

So my forays to the nearest lamppost got pushed to one driveway beyond the lamppost, then two driveways, then another, then the big leap - all the way to the corner (a 200m round trip). The next day I rounded the corner and went to the next corner, then on Monday I crossed that road and went half way to the next corner (400m total).

I thought that stood me in good stead for a Big Outing today. Mick drove me into town and we walked to Wetherspoon, where we had breakfast for lunch (followed by pudding, because why not?)...

The crossword, visible on the left, explains why we were sitting side by side, rather than the more normal arrangement of opposite each other. 

...then as Mick went off to buy me some sexy lingerie, I strolled back to the car. Two sets of 500m walks, with an hour or so of rest/eating in between, at a pace of around 14.45 per kilometre.

(As for the lingerie, I may be stretching the definition given the reality of big granny knickers (although they do have lace on the waistband, if that helps?), but I've been finding my usual pants are just the wrong height of rise and irritate my scar, so I now have underwear that comes all the way up to my navel. It's surprisingly comfy. Is it reasonable to start wearing granny pants as a general rule before the age of 50?)

By the time we got to the supermarket, where I was never going to do anything more than sit in the car, I was tired. The moment we got home I took myself off to bed to sleep the afternoon away. It really is surprising how exhausting it can be to walk a distance that, a couple of weeks ago, would have felt so trivial.

The other big milestone is that I made my own lunch yesterday (smoked salmon and scrambled eggs on toast, if you were wondering). I'm still letting Mick make most of my cups of tea, but he has now accepted that tea-making is within my range of permitted activities.

The only other thing to report is that I've knitted four socks in the last two weeks and have just embarked on a jumper. My brain is often too fuzzy to concentrate on anything significant (like reading) so watching YouTube and knitting fills the time.

I didn't trouble myself to move to take a decent snap of them. This is pair #2, with slightly mismatched toes due to not having quite enough yarn to achieve a full match. 

Schroedinger's Fibroid

Last Thursday morning I saw that a new record had been set at Big's Backyard Ultra. A chap called Harvey Lewis won after 108 hours, which equates to 450 miles.

I took comfort from this as I was sure that I felt better at that moment than Harvey was feeling, but it also made me wonder why, in the name of fun, one would put one's self through something that's more painful and sleep depriving than having a handful of organs removed.

My 'activity' (not that it involved any movement at all on my part) on Wednesday had been the removal of organs. An abdominal hysterectomy (i.e. sliced across the middle). Working from the top down, they took my ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus and cervix. Most importantly, given than none of those items had any inherent problem that necessitated their removal, they also took the large (and rather inconvenient) mass that was hanging off the back of my uterus. I've not seen any report as to its size on removal, but at the last scan, back in April, it was 10x9x8cm, still growing, and pressing agaisnt my bladder and bowel.

I'm now refering to this mass as Schroedinger's Fibroid. When the cause for my symptoms was being investigated (which involved a lot of scans) all reports said that the mass was benign and that it was just a fibroid (essentially an overproduction of new cells by the uterus causing a growth). So certain were they of their identification that not only was I told categorically that "you do not have cancer" but had the mass not been causing me any issues they would have simply left it. Yet, now that it has been removed (with no other evidence of its status having come to light during the surgery) the risk that the fibroid is hiding a malignant growth is so great that they will not now treat me for my sudden and complete lack of hormones until the histology results have come back. So, whilst in-situ it was definitely benign, but once outside of the body there's a significant risk that it's not benign. Surely the definition of Schroedinger's fibroid.

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not worried. I've read all the scan reports and talked to the surgeon about what he saw, based on which I would assess the likelihood of this being cancer as tiny.

The hospital experience was mixed. One major low point was 'cathetergate' involving a three hour argument with a healthcare assistant (who, at the time, I didn't know wasn't a nurse) who was entirely unhelpful (and downright wrong and rude) about the fact that my catheter wasn't draining. The debacle started at midnight, 12hours post-op, and went on until 3am, by which time I was in significant discomfort. She only finally went and fetched someone more senior after I'd resorted to the internet and managed to resolve the airlock myself.

The second major low point was asking for pain relief at 1230 on Thursday and finally receiving it (having progressed from discomfort to severe discomfort and into full-on pain) at 8pm on the sixth time of asking. This after being told quite clearly on arrival on the ward about how important it was to stay on top of pain and not wait until it got too bad to take painkillers. In hindsight, I should have sent Mick out to just buy me some liquid ibuprofen (which is all is asked for. I reckon I would have got it quicker if I had been requesting an opioid) - they wouldn't have approved, but I was fully alert and thus at no risk of being overdosed and, most importantly, I wouldn't have spent hours in pain.

The most trivial low point was the brocolli. It's not a vegetable that can withstand overcooking, so why do they choose to serve it with every meal?

At noon on Friday news came that I could be released, provided that that day's blood results came back okay. As no blood had even been taken at that point, I didn't forsee an early release. Sure enough, it was gone 6pm by the time someone came along with paperwork, a box of injections, a couple of dressings and scant instructions. Good timing, as I'd just eaten my evening meal and taken a dose of ibuprofen, so I was in a fit state to walk around three wings of the hospital so as to reach the main entrance. As the crow flies, the car was parked pretty close to my room, but there's no way out of the hospital from that wing.

After the ridiculous lack of sleep whilst in hospital (I swear they had me under surveillance so that the moment I fell asleep someone would come to wake me), I did quite a bit of catching up on Saturday and nowhere near enough moving.

Since then I've been up and about. For 'up' read 'sitting in an armchair' and for 'about' read '4x 60m walks per day'. Contrary to promises made pre-op, no physio came to see me and I didn't receive any advice or information as to what I can and cannot do. Fortunately other NHS trusts are more forward thinking and caring, and have published some excellent guidance online. Thus I know that 60m walks are my current level and that I'm not to even think about running a step until Christmas.

As for the comfort I took last Thursday in the knowledge that the winner of the Back Yard Ultra felt worse than I did, it turns out my 'knowledge' was nothing of the sort. I've since read that he returned to work on Friday, and he ran his commute. Madness!

View from my hospital bed. Not bad! The following morning the weather was so poor that I couldn't see those fields.

That classic combination of lasagne and mashed potato. Also the only main meal that didn't involve grey, soggy brocolli.

Out of bed 21 hours post-op. Had anyone walked through that door behind me whilst I was taking this they would have got an eyeful. I was happy to change out of the gown and into a more modest nightie.

Friday&Saturday 22&23 September - Hartington

Where was Erica? She spent Friday night at Peak View campsite, a basic place (sloping & unmown field with a tap) right by where the High Peak Trail meets the Tissington Trail in the Peak District, at a cost of £15.

Weather: Friday showers; Saturday sunshine

After my 12-hour race in mid-July, I had a decision to make: was I going to spend August training for a 24-hour race (18 September) or for a half marathon (today)? I entered the half marathon in question in 2019, for the September 2020 event. As with most events in 2020, it got cancelled, and I couldn’t make the dates for 2021 or 2022. This year was the last chance I had to use that place.

After much dithering between the two options, I got to Scotland and quickly decided that I didn’t want to train for either; instead I wanted to have unstructured fun on the hills – and that’s exactly what I did.

Knowing I was capable of covering the half marathon distance (even if not of meeting the objective I had in mind when submitted my entry 4 years ago), without doing any specific training for it, it seemed silly not to use my place. So, on the way back from Scotland I did my only real bit of preparation for today: we stopped off and I ran the route. I’m not sure that there’s any coach who would recommend doing this as one’s one and only training effort – and in reality it was solely a psychological exercise and a confidence boost when I ran the course just 2 minutes slower than my PB.

The only other bit of preparation was that I booked us onto Peak View campsite for the night before. The race is a linear one, with buses laid on to get you to the start with a good half an hour to spare, so you can queue for the Portaloos and get jolly cold, as you have to arrive ‘ready to run’ with no baggage transfer (I used the bus in 2018 and it was 2 degrees and foggy on arrival). The campsite I’d booked was 800m from the start line, so I was able to leave Erica at 0940 and arrive in plenty of time for the 10am start, completely omitting the Portaloo experience.

After yesterday’s showers, we woke up to a fine sky this morning. There was an excellent 360 degree view from Erica; this snap was taken from her rear bumper.

It was a bonus that the campsite had direct access onto the Tissington Trail; it was a downside that it was through unmown wet grass. I found a solution:

A rummage in Erica’s collection of bin bags netted two of suitable size – one of which was a bread bag.

As soon as we got onto the grit trail, I removed the bags and switched into my runners, putting my sopping shoes into a bag for Mick to take back for me.

Ten minutes after I arrived at the start line, we were off.

All started well: my splits for the first 4k were all within 2 seconds of each other, and whilst slightly faster than target, not so much as to make me think I’d gone off too keenly. My pace dropped on the next 3k, but only because they’re gently uphill. At 8.5km, without breaking stride, I executed a faultless bottle-swap with Mick who was standing at the edge of the trail (I was carrying my own water, to sip as and when, rather than needing to slow down to drink out of cups at the three water stations on the route).

Mick took a photo of me …except it wasn’t me. Granted, it does look like me and I do often wear a blue t-shirt. 

Me - not wearing my blue top today. 

From around 13km things started to go less smoothly, with cramp threatening in both feet and my right calf. Entirely my own fault for neglecting strength work (not to mention failing to train to do this pace over this distance). Given how good I felt otherwise, I asked them nicely, and repeatedly, to please just let me get through the rest of the distance without impediment.

This race route has a sting in the tail. About 200m before the end, one of the old railway bridges wasn’t reinstated when the leisure route was made, so the trail descends steeply down then immediately steeply back up. A surprise to some of those around me, but I knew it was coming and that the finish line was just ahead. Further ahead than expected – they’ve finally moved it so that the route doesn’t measure short (as it did in both 2018 and 2019).

My time was 1:55:53 - three minutes faster than my PB, set in 2018. I’m rather chuffed with that, and it seems to establish that hill bagging in Scotland is excellent half marathon training*.

(*Makes sense really. I ascended most of those hills without pause, at a pace at the top of end comfortable, then jogged back down, so I was generally putting in sustained 1.5-2 hour efforts on the uphills, before conditioning my quads on the downs.)

 

  

 

7 August to 10 September: Scotland

Another forgotten post that I'm belatedly publishing:

Erica's first trip to Scotland: she got to sample twice a kipping spot that her big brother Bertie has used a number of times, enjoyed a spot unique to her, and travelled further north than Bertie has ever been in the UK. Whilst she only provided overnight accommodation on three nights of our five week trip, she was (as always) mightily handy for lots of day trips.

For the records:

Monday 7 August and Friday 8 September – both nights were spent in the same pull-in not far off the M6 near Shap. I don’t recall what the weather was on our way north, but on our way south it was hot (up to 29 degrees whilst driving), with an overnight low of 15 degrees.

Friday 25 August – spent in the pouring rain in a little (3-car) car park near Mount Eagle on the Black Isle. With a trip to Inverness on the Friday afternoon, I figured it made sense to take advantage of being so far north by continuing on another half an hour to do Alness parkrun. Happily, I remembered having seen this parking area when we bagged Mount Eagle a couple of years ago, so we spent a peaceful night (save for the rain drumming on the roof), on our lonesome, just slightly off the beaten track.

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Incidentally, the only reason we didn’t go straight up to Scotland after the Lakeland 100 weekend was because we had tickets for The Hundred cricket on 5 August, hence we travelled south to then travel back north a few days later. In the event, the weather was so wet on 5 August that we decided it wasn’t even worth leaving the house, so sure were we that both matches we were due to watch would be rained off (which they were; not a single ball was bowled). At least we got a full refund on our tickets, and instead I bought a Sky Sports pass for the month, which meant that we got to watch cricket every day for the month long tournament.  

What happens if you forget to specifically ask someone to search in the wilderness of the garden for courgettes whilst you're gone. The largest is a few grammes shy of 3kg.  (I've since made 23 jars of marrow chutney, of 4 different flavours) 

Monday & Tuesday 7 & 8 August – Home to Newtonmore

Here we are nearing the end of September, and Erica is having a night out. In thinking about the blog post I'll be writing, I realised I'd not posted this one from early August, nor the counterpart from early September. For the purposes of backing up my own memory, here, belatedly, is the former. 

Where was Erica? She spent Monday night in a pull-in on a B road near Shap, a location that has been used by Bertie quite a few times before.

Weather: Sunny intervals.

To the best of our knowledge and belief, Erica has never been to Scotland before. She spent the first 6 years of her life as a little-used NHS patient transport vehicle based in Sheffield, during which period it’s difficult to envision a reason that she would have ventured anywhere near the Scottish border, and in our ownership the nearest she’s been is Penrith. We decided she was the most appropriate vehicle for this trip, so she’s on an adventure visiting some of the places that Big Brother Bertie has been (and others that he hasn’t).

Monday 7 August

Leaving home on schedule at 0900, things looked good for a timely arrival for our lunch date with friends near Preston. Then we passed a ‘Road Ahead Closed’ sign, soon after which we belatedly remembered our conversation of a week and a half ago on this very road, when we’d seen the ‘advance notice of road closure’, noted that it started on the day we would be travelling to Scotland, and agreed that we would need to take a completely different route. Add in an accident on the motorway and our journey was significantly longer than it should have been.  

A good catch-up with Al & Nicky, then on to Arnside for a quick cup of tea with Conrad, before we headed further north. We’d been unsure as to whether to spend the night at Shap or at Gretna, but opted for Shap. I’d say they’re both equally good kipping spots, but Shap is free, versus £5 at Gretna, for the same facilities (i.e. none).

Getting Erica sorted for the evening took a bit of effort, as we were by no means travelling light on this trip (Erica is only our accommodation for the trip north and south; we’re in a house whilst here), but all was fine once we’d rearranged our load such that everything that wouldn’t fit in cupboards was shoved into every nook and cranny of the cab.

Three crates of stuff stacked nicely on the driver's seat, and the two bags of shoes plus other odds and ends fitted in the foot wells. The big screen, however, was more of an inconvenience. 

Tuesday 8 August

We were on the road at 0730, but only for an initial half-hour hop to the next services, where we breakfasted in the car park and availed ourselves of their toilet facilities and bins*. Our next stop of any significance was Perth, for fuel and a bit of shopping at Tesco, followed by a bigger shop at Aldi. From there it wasn’t too much further to Newtonmore, but I decided on a little diversion en-route. There were a few places we'd wanted to visit on our way to TGO Challenge Control in April/early May, but circumstances prevented us from executing that part of the trip. Some of those side trips are on the agenda for this trip, and this was the first: at Dalwhinnie we turned left and made our way via Laggan to Garva Bridge, where Mick dropped me off so that I could run a route on the north side of the Spey down to Spey Dam. We'd mentioned this off-road alternative to various Challengers based on the map; we can now recommend it based on experience.

It's only a short hop from Spey Dam to Newtonmore, where we intend to stay for a wee while. 

 (*the previous night I’d opened a cupboard and thought we’d accidentally packed two bags of protein powder. Then I discovered that no, one of those bags, empty of its original contents, had been used for kitchen waste, then had erroneously made its way into Erica’s cupboard.

(post blog note: five weeks later, as we repacked Erica to come home, we discovered that the bag of nuts sitting at the back of our food cupboard in Newtonmore was in fact a bag of mouldy rubbish (used tea bags, mainly) from our journey north, so our outward error was not an isolated event!)) 

Thursday 28 – Monday 31 July – Lakeland 100 Weekend, Coniston

Where was Bertie? Thursday & Sunday: Church House Inn, a 5-van campsite in Torver, £20 without electricity. Friday & Saturday: in a field on Lake Road in Coniston (included in Lakeland 100 entry fee).

Weather: Sunshine and showers. Hot in the sunshine, warm enough in the showers. Windy from Saturday afternoon on.

Thursday

Two years ago we spent the night before the Lakeland weekend by Lancaster Services. Last year we stayed near Milnthorpe. This year, even though we didn’t get around to phoning a campsite until the night before, we got ourselves a pitch at Torver, just a couple of miles along the road from Coniston.

We weren’t the only people to have the same idea, and of the 12 units on the 5-pitch site, at least five contained Lakeland competitors – including the two vans immediately next to us. More were inside the Inn.

Due to our late booking, we were in the car park, rather than in the field, and there wasn’t an electric hook up available, which was fine by us, especially when they knocked a fiver off the quoted price.

We chatted to our neighbours, poured a few containers of water into Bertie’s tank, then had a quiet night.

Friday

By a few minutes past nine, Bertie had driven the five minutes up the road and was settled on the ‘overflow and large vehicles’ camping field. Soon after, Mick went off to registration and kit check. It didn’t take long at that time of day, giving him plenty of time to repack his bag, have lunch, have a little kip, and get ready for the race briefing at 4.30pm.

Relieved at having sailed through kit check and hiding any pre-race nerves well. 

A period of loitering and chatting followed, before he took himself off to the starting pen. Per tradition, and rather appropriately, Nessun Dorma was sung and at 6pm on the dot off they went, all hoping to complete the 105-mile course (6000m of ascent) within the 40-hour time limit.

My period of intense dot-watching then commenced and I soon learnt that, for me, dot watching 105 miles is much more involved than watching the 50. I was a woman obsessed.

Mick entering the first checkpoint. I would have got a better screenshot from the live feed webcam if I’d pressed the right buttons the first time I tried.

Saturday

View from Bertie's roof early on Saturday morning. It seems that a lot of runners own vans. 

Not the best night’s sleep ever, but I managed 3 hours more than the runners out on the course, so I figured that was good enough to put into practice my distraction plan: I was going up a hill. In hindsight, it wasn’t a good plan, as 3km in I decided that I couldn’t bear being out of mobile phone signal at the time when Mick was most likely to phone me, so I hotfooted it back to Coniston, just about making it back into a signal area before he called.

I won’t disclose how much of the day I then spent staring at screens as it’s an embarrassing and obscene statistic. All the things I’d taken with me to do whilst I was waiting went completely untouched.

Alas, Mick’s day didn’t go to plan, and at Dalemain (59 miles and 3600m of ascent through the route) he called it a day*. A two hour minibus ride got him back to Coniston. I’m sorry to say, but watching the honed athletes climb down off that bus was the funniest thing I saw all weekend (remember a time that you’ve finished a long day walk, got in the car then driven an hour or more home, and how stiff you felt getting out the car. These chaps had been moving for 20+ hours, were mainly injured in some way, and had just spent two hours setting into the shape of a minibus seat (they took a scenic route back)).

From my selfish point of view, at least my eyes could have a rest from my phones screens and I was going to get a good night’s sleep. I could even nip up my hill on Sunday morning.

Weather forecast for Sunday morning. The hill isn’t even of a classification that I’m collecting, so I decided it can wait

A small glitch with Bertie’s hot water system**, delayed Mick’s shower, but he was still in bed at a reasonable hour.

Sunday

I wasn’t done with dot-watching yet. We had a friend doing the L50, and the moment I woke up at 5am I needed to know how she’d fared overnight. As delighted as I was to see that she was still going, I didn’t think Mick would appreciate me sharing the news quite that early. I snuggled back down and slept some more.

Having decided against my hill, I opted for a simple circuit up to the car park on the Walna Scar Road, before looping around back to Coniston. Thanks to racing five young chaps up the (incredibly steep!) road up to the car park (I won, albeit I accept they didn’t know they were in a race), I managed to arrive at the Miners’ Bridge at almost the exact moment that Vicky (the very person who we can blame for egging us on to enter the Lakeland 50 in 2019) got there, 49 miles into her 50-mile race. I stayed with her down to the road end, before going on ahead. There’s no support allowed in either the 50 or the 100, and I wasn’t going to risk her being disqualified for me ‘supporting’ her with my company (although, in all honesty, if it had been a random stranger 50 runner that I’d met, I’d have still chatted with them down to the road purely because we were going the same way and I was interested in what they’d been doing).

With Bertie packed away, we tried to attend the awards presentations at noon, but there were just too many people to fit in the Marquee, with crowds outside too. So, we gave it up as a bad job, returned to Bertie, and ten minutes later we were back at the campsite in Torver.

Evening meal at the Wilson Arms, Torver, where almost every table was taken by people wearing Lakeland 50/100 items (myself included; I proudly wore my 2022 Finsisher[sic] t-shirt***)

Monday

With Mick’s protesting thighs no longer protesting so much, his body decided it was time to let him know that he’d been bitten to pieces by midges on Friday night – a fact about which he had previously been completely unaware. His first request this morning wasn’t painkillers (as yesterday morning), but anti-itch cream.

Not much to report from the rest of the day. Our journey home was first via a roadside café where Mick had an excellent breakfast and I had something a bit more modest (although, oddly, bits from Mick’s plate kept landing on mine; I didn’t object), then via Halifax.

Breakfast. The generous teapot was just out of shot.

A slow journey home from Halifax (road works, breakdowns and just too much traffic), but we got here in the end, although the complete emptying of Bertie will wait for tomorrow. It had been a long day and other things took priority – like having tea and SORNing Bertie, who won’t be going back on a public road until at least September.

(*One of his problems was his right knee, about which he was concerned before he set off. His training went really well, without any significant injury, this year. Then last Wednesday he did his final run pre-race – just a little 8k, for which he decided to not risk anything by tackling the mud and roots on his usual routes, but to stay on tarmac around the village. He was 8.1km through his 8k, and a couple of hundred metres from home, when he tripped on a manhole cover. He came home with a bloody elbow and a bloody, bashed knee. It could have been a whole lot worse (in that he didn’t do anything that would prevent him from starting the race), but it wasn’t ideal and he was mightily cross with himself. Incidentally, it was the only time he fell over in just shy of 1000 miles of training this year.

**I did the Virtual Lakeland 100 in 2022, most of which I achieved in my 24-hour race. The Virtual t-shirts had a typo on them, so whereas people who did the real event were ‘Finishers’, the virtual runners were ‘Finsishers’. I love the t-shirt for that feature.

***The hot water glitch was related to me changing Bertie's failing pump a few weeks ago to one of a different design, not having a suitable jubilee clip and hoping that the barbed fitting would be adequate to hold pipe onto pump. It became detached on Friday morning, was soon reseated, but I’d not twigged that disconnection from the non-return valve had allowed the whole contents of the hot water tank (cold at that time) to drain back into the main tank. I thus heated an empty tank, and Mick turned on the shower to find no water coming out.)

If You Go Down To The Woods Today...

It felt like we were doing something illicit, walking through the local woods in the dark, flashing torches on and off

The last two laps of my race last weekend (see previous post) required a torch, whereupon we discovered that the mount of one of our headtorches had broken. Not a problem in the context of last weekend’s race (using it as a hand torch was fine), but very much a problem if Mick had found himself needing to use his back-up torch in his race next weekend.

It was Wednesday before I thought to look up whether Alpkit offered a 2 year warranty (purchased 16 July 2021 – so just over 2 years ago by Tuesday, but I would have argued the period between order and receipt). As it happens, Alpkit offers a 3-year warranty. The offending headtorch was duly sent back, but its replacement likely wouldn’t arrive in time for Mick. The answer seemed to be to buy a new one, then return the replacement when it arrived, except that when I read the reviews it seems that the fault we’d incurred is a common one, and either Alpkit’s design or choice of materials is not up to the job.

The result, after much browsing, was to bite the bullet and buy a significant upgrade from a specialist company (from 240 lumen max output to 1400 lumen max output, and from 5hrs run-time at a meaningful light level to 22 hours at double the light level). The new purchase arrived yesterday and it seemed like a good idea to nip out in the dark, firstly to see the difference between old and new, and secondly for Mick to familiarise himself with the controls.

What a difference! All of our old headtorches (we have amassed a collection over the years) are perfectly adequate for backpacking and even the weakest of them has been successfully used for night-hiking, but if we’d known two years ago what we were going to get up to over the next couple of years, it definitely would have been worth investing sooner.

on 'low' - only impressive in terms of battery life on this setting

One of the higher settings (but not highest, which uses the 1100 spotlight and the 400 floodlight simultaneously).

Me trying it out, Mick trying not to trip over roots or slip in the mud ahead of me.

We didn’t venture far through the woods, but it was enough to tell me that the tendons in my left foot still haven’t forgiven me for last weekend. Boo hiss!

Mick’s other panic-purchase this week was a new waterproof, having belatedly discovered delamination on the hood of his old one (a Kit Check failure, if spotted). Having reassured him that this is not a case of ‘goodness, these races don’t half turn out to be expensive’, because he would need a new running waterproof whether he was taking part in an event or not (and his old one hadn’t done badly with >7 years' use), more internet browsing was done, a selection made and an order placed.

Said jacket was ordered on Wednesday and dispatched ten minutes later, with delivery promised the following day. I got the usual suite of progress emails, except for the key: “Your package is ready to collect”. Checking the tracking info on Friday it said it was out for delivery, but again no “ready to collect” message arrived. This was a concern, with time running out to sort out a replacement if it had gone astray, and with the vendor’s FAQ making it clear that we weren’t to contact them until three working days had passed, but which time it would have been too late for it to reach us before we leave home. Another buy-again-send-one-back situation? 

First, however, I thought it was probably worth a rummage in the sack of parcels at the pick-up point. We did that on Saturday lunchtime, and there it was, at the bottom of the pile. I’m pretty sure it had been there since Thursday after all and they’d just failed to scan it. Panic over!

Hopefully that’s all the last minute kit panics. Just a few days to go now.