Half birthday

My good friend A’s had his birthday at the weekend, which falls on the same day as my half birthday. For those not in the know, your half birthday is 6 months after your whole birthday. I only started celebrating my half birthday because it rained on A’s whole birthday parade, but its stuck, and once you start down the road of diving up the birthday year, various fractions of quarter, sixth and twelfth- birthday fragments are all available as excuses to get some cake in. It’s also nice to have a day in the summer – the longest day – to do some birthday type stuff, rather than having a day in the winter (the shortest day of the year – curse my luck!) when everyone’s already made plans for a Christmas party and can’t make it down the pub.

We had decided to do the Croyde Aquathlon, which is a Triathlon without the cycling bit, so I didn’t have any excuse to wear my new Porno pants and packed only ‘normal’ running shorts. We set off for the coast, put up our tents and watched in horror as the clouds swept in and began to rain on both of our various birthday fraction parades. The damp Saturday morning continued to keep any high spirits in check and we ate Weetabix in large units in the hope they would see us through the forthcoming efforts.

The sea was quite flat, the briefing anything but, and the enthusiasm of the race organiser made me smile. I struggled into my new swimming wetsuit and everyone pointed and laughed at my apparently strange shaped right knee. Ive never noticed this peculiarity before, and think it’s just an artifact of wearing the wetsuit. I wondered if I should put on my latest gadget - some mask-type goggles for the run to the sea, but feared they might steam up too quickly. I decided to hold them in my hand until getting into the water, and when the mini fog horn thing sounded, I set off in a crowd of rubber clad bodies down the beach. I went off to the left of the pack so as to get some clean water to swim into. I’ve been in the mix of the swim start before and once was definitely enough. The water felt quite warm on my head, and it was fine to get straight into the swimming rather than flail about doing breaststroke thinking ‘Ooooh it’s a tad chilly isn’t it?!’ We swam out to a big orange buoy, back in to a man on the beach then out and back around another buoy, making a big ‘M’ shape.

Check out my dodgy shaped knee!

A’s was just finishing getting changed when I arrived in transition and bid me farewell, shouting ‘take your time’ as he left for the run section. I wrestled my wetsuit off and trainers on, then followed him some 30 seconds later.

My back with A's in the distance and some very young looking race officials!

I remained this distance behind him for the whole race, never quite making any headway into the gap between us. I crossed the finish line and heard someone heaving, and looked over to see A’s puking up some of the extra Weetabix that hadn’t been required in beating me.

Well done mate.

Next stop in this summer of multi sport events is the Bude Sprint Triathlon on Sunday - and that will definitely be a porno pants outing!

January is rubbish

I heard on the news yesterday that it was officially the most depressing day of the year.

It says, "GPs say exercise and reading up on depression are ways to beat the blues".

WTF? Its dark and cold outside, you've got no money and you're feeling a bit depressed. Whats the one thing thats not going to help that situation? - Going out to buy, then sitting down and reading a book on depression. That really is depressing.

Thank fuck its out of the way!

Mr Weather and Mr Negative

The second May Bank Holiday is the weekend that signals the arrival of summer.

My friend’s mum has a timeshare chalet on a holiday park and everyone traditionally gets down there for a long weekend of relaxing good times. This, of course, can take many different forms for different people, so there is usually a nice range of ‘relaxing’ things to get involved in. Most of them however, rely heavily on being able to go outdoors.

The trouble this year was that Mr Weather got his weekends mixed up. He showed up on the first May Bank Hol, and turned it into a classic weekend (which, incidentally, has been blogged, recovered from and im now wearing the T-Shirt). This time, he decided to have a holiday of his own and disappeared completely. Saturday, he had probably just popped down the shops, or something, because it wasn’t horrible, just never really got going. Sunday, however, there was no sign of Mr Weather anywhere. My dad summed it up quite well when I called him to see how he was getting on with his camping trip with Mum, Sister, G, and the two boys;

'Hey Dad, is it a wash out?'

‘Son, it feels like the end of the world here’

Not that the rain spoiled everything- its just ten times easier to have a good time when there’s a warm blue sky as a backdrop. A warm blue sky and not having Mr Negative with you.

Ive known Mr Negative for a few years but this was the first time that I couldn’t find anything to like about him all weekend. He is one of the difficult friend-of-a-friend types that I wouldn’t choose to spend time with, but can’t really do anything about his occasional presence. It seemed that every moment he wasn’t moaning about being tired, or complaining about Mr Weather’s absence, he was being aggressive and rude to our mutual friend. What she sees in him ill honestly never know.

He is the thorn in the back of the weekend and a big thorn this year because of the small group size. The numbers probably peaked two years a go when 12 or so were in the chalet, 8 or so camped, and then another group which had a few overlapping friends were all down too, so at one point we had 30-odd playing Rounders on the beach. In the first year, 5 years ago, there were just 5 of us. I think the neat normal distribution of numbers agrees with the organiser in that this years trip should signify the end for this weekend- at least in its current form, and it will be replaced by a newer model next year.

On Monday, when it was almost too late, Mr Negative went home and Mr Weather turned up. I had an ice cream in the sun, went out on the Mackerel boat and drove home looking forward to the coming months. 4 Weddings and a Stag do make June and July a densely packed social affair, I just hope the Mr’s make the right decisions on when and where they should show up.