Berlin Marathon 2011
Labels: audioactive, barcelona marathon, berlin marathon, running
Labels: audioactive, barcelona marathon, berlin marathon, running
Labels: Brighton, fiction, flash fiction, grit lit, writing
Week 1 (27 June - 3 July) > 19.85 miles
Felt good but it was hotter than hell in Brighton.
Week 2 (4 July 10 July) > 15.14 miles
Started the week with hill training. That was fun. But how I got up on Sunday after partying for two nights in a row (and being woken up by my Texan friend at 6am) and managed the 9.4 miles I will never ever now. Again, fucking hot.
Noticing that the only thing that pulls me through the long runs is the vision of me sitting down with a roast and a glass of wine in a pub. Perhaps not the best motivation!
Week 3 (11 July - 17 July) > 9.07 miles
Not my best week. Having visitors, evening events or meetings - all excuses for pub and drinking culture - have taken their toll. Gave myself the week off, apart from Saturday and Sunday.
Week 4 (18 July - 24 July) > about 10- 15 miles TBC
Again, not my best week. I did one hill sprint on Wednesday, but skipped Thursday. Too much bloody work on. Today's run was 5 miles through Oxfordshire canals and meadows and tiny villages. Lovely, but not feeling the most fittest of runners.
Week 5 (25 July - 31 July) > all to be revealed in the next blog, I guess!
Labels: audioactive, berlin marathon, fundraising, running, training
Labels: berlin marathon, ebay misadventures, the story of my life
Old Habits - by Amy Riley
Fingernails to the quick – that’s me. I bite them every time I have a deadline, and being someone who always leaves things to the last minute, that’s every time an article’s due in.
It’s a frosty winter’s night as I pull the electric heater close and hunch over my pad. It’s 4.25am. Five more hours. My head hurts and sleep beckons, but I resist.
A badger wanders past.
Frost cracks across the patio, coats the grass and looks like an icy lace shawl under the half moon’s light.
The wind blows and heaves from the north, scaring me. I’m alone. I look up at the door, making sure no one’s trying to get in, and continue to write.
My writing takes me on a journey through a valley, where I can count the ghosts. I rifle through my pages of handwritten notes, wondering why my handwriting never improves over the years, wondering why I never bothered to learn shorthand, why I can never finish things.
A man’s voice calls through the pages. A hoarse voice, whiskey cured and Marlborough reds deepened, he can still curse on his deathbed.
‘Goddamn, give me some brew,’ he says to his son-in-law, who goes out to the fridge.
He was a man living out in the woods, nursed by his daughter and forgotten about by history. The oldest living Confederate, he claimed, with a cheeky glint in his eye.
‘You shouldn’t drink,’ says the daughter, who wipes his brow with a towel.
‘I can do what I damn well like’ says the man. ‘I’m going to drink my beer and I’m going to tell my story to this nice young man visiting us.’
The man looks at me, licking his lips, watching as the son-in-law, a heavy man with a blue lumberjack shirt, surrenders the can.
I was the one who travelled hundreds of miles, looking for the man they said had killed three bears with his bare hands, and I’d found him, invalid, sickly, dying of cancer.
As the sun begins to rise, I type away my notes, which I carried from Arizona to Texas to here, in a rucksack, by bus, car, motorcycle, train and then plane, and see my story take shape.
It is like watching a miracle happen, and I know that I’ll be able to finish the article, re-read it, sub it, then email it to the editor for 9am.
I tell myself I’ll start earlier, plan it better.
But old habits, true to the saying, die as hard as the oldest living Confederate.
Labels: fiction, flash fiction, my writing, short story, writers
Labels: fiction, novels, thought for the day, tom robbins