A weak week

Travelling from Tuesday to Thursday, in England. Tuesday night I manage a Vindaloo Jalfrezi with Peshwari Naan and poppadoms and spicy onions. Two pints of Kingfisher and pint of Guinness. I watch Arsenal getting put out of the Champions league by a rather classy Barcelona side. I'm amazed to see at least 4 Arsenal tops in the pub in Lichfield which must be 150 miles from London. I walk back to the hotel and enjoy an good nights sleep interupted by heartburn and a near death experience level of thirst...Clearly 10 years of living abroad has taken the edge off my curry handling abilities.

I'm better prepared for Wednesday night. I pick up a hamburger and chips pre match from an English chippy. This is more of a cultural challenge for a Scot than I could have imagined. I was hoping from Black Pudding and forlornly wishing for a Haggis.

They didn't do chippy(deep fried) Pizza. The Sausage looked weird(Its local made !!), smoked sausage wasn't bent in the middle, they had never heard of mince pies(pardon !!) and the Steak pies had kidney(barf)in them. .

Fish was Cod or Pollock which left me thinking of something that rhymed with the latter. Have these folk never tried Haddock. This left me the Hobson's choice of Hamburger supper(sorry with chips). I think the girl behind the counter was left a little stunned by my long winded interrogation of their wares and having to concentrate intently on my accent. Bizarrely they wrapped chips and burger separately which was difficult to work though as I walked to the pub.

I take in Champions league qtr final and see Manchester United going out to a well organised Bayern Munchen who despite going down 2-0 in the first six minutes never really looked out of it. Its amazing how many Manchester United fans live in Lichfield, almost as many Bayern fans by the sounds of the pub. Three pints of Guinness and an aborted pint of Becks Vier and I'm up the road to the hotel again. This time in much better condition than the night before...

I'm back late Thursday and decide on a run on Friday. I weigh myself before the run and see I'm at 77.8Kg which is 2.2KG heavier than my normal and pretty stable 75.6kg. I think the pub and champions league training sessions need to be spaced out a bit more.

Its a great day and no wind and nice sunny but not too warm an evening.I'm out for 10K
and find the first 5 quite hard work, I'm at the 5K mark at the top of the hill in 24:30. Not exactly a flying time. I don't know if it was just mental but I actually felt heavy when I'm running.

I finished in a tired 50.01 and felt pretty whacked. There was no wind so no weather excuses. You don't need to be Einstein to work it out.