Two for the price of one

Good morning to you all.  So early in June and already playing catch up on the blogging, this post is a once in a lifetime never to be repeated buy one, get one free offer (probably to be repeated as the month goes on). So where to start?  Oh yes, Saturday....

I woke up on Saturday morning and quickly realised two things:

1.  Sometimes I can be astonishingly stupid

2.  Isn't it lucky that I live in a quiet and safe neighbourhood?

The trigger for these exciting revelations?  I got up, got dressed and could not find my front door key.  Eventually located it...... in the door.  Oops.  But no-one came in and murdered me in my sleep / stole my tv / nicked the wine out of the fridge, so I'm counting that as a WIN.  Buoyed by this feeling of invincibility, I took Murdoch for a lovely walk around our local haunt, for about 70 minutes.  I just mapped it out on Mapometer and it looks like it's about 3.2 miles.  I love doing this walk, it's a brilliant mix of walking around the fields and then up through the woods, some of it is a bit scrambly as there are some really steep and slippery bits.  Our second walk of the day was at Blackheath, a social walk with our dog walking company.  It's a lovely chatty walk, and Murdoch gets to hurtle about with his doggy friends.  So Saturday, in a nutshell was all about the walking.

Yesterday, I got up, found the door key on the shelf where it belongs and took Murdoch out for that same 3.2 mile loop.  It was very rainy - a real contrast to yesterday's walk and my walking trousers were soaked within minutes.  Our walk takes us through very long grass so I was soaked right up to my thighs.  Found a huge tick on Murdoch's neck and had to remove it *yeeeeeeeeuuurrrgh* After our walk I went to meet a couple of friends for brunch at a local restaurant which I heartily recommend.  I always have scrambled egg with lovely big bits of Lincolnshire sausage chopped up in it. Delicious.

After brunch, I headed home and then it was time to don my running kit and head out to an event that I was quite excited about.  Some people that I had met through Twitter were coming towards the end of quite an impressive challenge.  They were running the entire 108 mile length of the Greensand Way, from Hamstreet in Kent to Haslemere in Surrey over the course of four days.  This challenge was unsupported, so these guys were running with hefty rucksacks on their backs.  Yesterday was the last day of the challenge and the team had invited us to join them for three miles of the run, from the White Horse in Hascombe to the Merry Harriers in Hambledon.  

I arrived at the White Horse at 1pm and had a lovely chat while we waited for the team to arrive, which was about half an hour later.  Frankly, they looked a lot better than I had expected - I was expecting to see four zombies stagger into the car park.  They stopped long enough to devour some much needed salty crisps and then we were off along the trail.  It was a lovely run - I think that seeing us really raised the spirits of the team and we had a great time hearing about some of their adventures so it felt like we got to the Merry Harriers in no time. 2.7 miles done and in the bag.  We then went into the pub while the team refuelled.  After lunch we saw them on their way, along with the very brave Lidia, who decided on the spur of the moment to keep going with the team to the end of the run, which meant that she ran 15 miles yesterday, without any training or preparation.  I later headed to Haslemere to see them finish - around 8pm last night, to rapturous applause from those of us waiting.  I hope those guys slept well in their own beds last night and are not too full of aches and pains this morning.  I left them to celebrate, headed home and took Murdoch out for a short half hour walk around the block and that was me done for the day.  

That's your lot for now, I'm hungry and ready to eat some breakfast!