Take That

Take That, Progress Tour, Stadium of Light, Sunderland

Friday 26th May - opening night!   

What a gig! Not only was this TT's first concert in 15 years with all 5 members, but it was also Robbie's return to the stage since 2006. And boy did he make an entrance! After a good set by the Pet Shop Boys (loving the square backing singer costumes!!), Gary, Mark, Jason and Howard burst onto stage with a few of their pre-Robbie recent hits! Then Robbie performed a good 5-6 of his greatest solo hits. Finally, the main show began and with water canons, aerial acrobatics and a head dive by the Robster, the gang performed the Flood in amazing style! 

The show progressed (ha, excuse the pun!) with a lot of drama, an amazing Angle of the North stylie mechanical man (see below) and a mixture of old and new classic Take That songs. Certainly a night to remember and worth the sore feet! 

Cocktails, young folk and trendy music!

Last night was my works leaving do. After a traditional leaving meal in the Court Inn (perfect pre-drinking, deep-fried stodge) and a cheeky neon green shot, we hit the newest and hippest bars in Durham: Popolos: basically still Brown Sugar but with a 10-flavour, Moijto Wednesday cocktail menu (although all flavours came out pretty much the same!)
Osbournes: a nice, classic establishment (very quiet) down the alley by Klute. Bargin mint aero shooters / jeager bombs / tia maria and coke. By this point (around 10pm) concern over our stamina was arising but we embraced the sugar highs and headed to....
Fat Buddha: This place is either packed and 10-deep to the bar or dead - last night,  we were the only ones in there. I had a nice blackcurrent bellini!!
Lloyds: our final destination and somewhere to dance. With our average age of c.28, it was somewhat disturbing to feel about 10-years older than the average drinker. And, with full length jeans (albeit skinny and ticking the figure hugging dress code) we were somewhat overdressed. Even so, with some awesome dancing, the young unemployed folk of Durham and a few token students who were avoiding revision, seemed to appreciate our presence. As did the DJ as we bombarded him with requests for songs we thought were modern enough for such an evening! The reward was a free bottle of sparkling something (wine/cider/vinegar...hard to tell) and lasting till 1am before the thought of work in the morning kicked in.

All in all, a very fun and memorable night with a brilliant group of friends who I am going to miss!!!

You can just about see us all through the dry ice, which I suspect was trying to mask our age and dancing!

 

Windy Weather

What is going on with the weather? Well it is all about the Jet Stream - an oscillatory air stream over the northern hemisphere that is largely responsible for our weather - it brings in the wet weather from across the Atlantic. In the summer 2007, it "unusually"* sat further south than normal in June and July and led to the most costly floods the UK has ever experienced. In the summer of 2008 it again seemed to get stuck over northern England leading to more floods in Morpeth and in 2009 and last summer, we had unsettled, rubbish weather pretty much all summer. Looking at its current patterns (see below), it seems once again to be hitting the UK pretty hard and blowing us to bits....and little sign of moving northwards anytime soon!! But early indications suggest that things may pick up in early June - fingers crossed?

Climate change? Well, yes, maybe, but umm, no, maybe not - as with all the weather extremes that we get (like the heavy snow over xmas) we must be careful when blaming climate change as these types of weather have happened in the past (e.g. my big sis Claire's birthday when we were kids, on May 21st, when it snowed!!) so may just be part of much largely and longer cyclic weather behaviour (perhaps over decadal length and timescales longer than our instrumental records). But on the other hand, they may be related to anthropogenic climate change - probably best not getting into my views on climate change - all a bit complex!

Crap summer?  Ha ha, who knows! Not even the best models in the world know this! Most likely it is in the hands of the gods!

Running? Dangerous, frustrating, hard work and darn right annoying when racing and everyone who raced on Sunday across the UK knows. Big well done to bro-in-law Ross who ran an amazing 2:23 in the Edinburgh marathon in this wind!! Whoop!

Image courtesy of www.wunderground.com

*So given that the reoccurrence of the jet stream's southerly summer tracks, 

perhaps it isn't so usual after all! 

Chasing at Loughborough

I made my seasons debut over 3000m steeplechase on Sunday whilst representing Scotland at the Loughborough International. I was 2nd in 10:33 - so solid but not quite the outcome I was after. To say it was windy, is an understatement. I took the race on in a determined fashion leading for 4 laps, but felt my strength lacked in the last km, and my hurdle form deteriorated a bit. 

Watch the race here:

http://www.athleticos.org/coverage/238787-2011-Loughborough-International-Athletics/video/491818-3000m-Steeplechase-Match-Women

I made two errors in the race I think. First was the opening 3:20 km.....far too quick, especially considering the wind and hence the last 3 laps were lactic hell. Second was failing to relax making my hurdling more energy consuming. This reflected nerves about my seasons debut and not knowing what steeple shape I was in, and also if I would remember how to water jump (which I did fairly well). With this out of the way, I now can't wait for my next steeple outing at the Watford BMC in a few weeks!!!!!! 

Photo courtesy of Edinburgh Sports Photography and taken from the SA FB page. 

New race experience: False start!!! 

You're stood on the line with spikes gripping the track, the stadium is quiet, your heart is pounding, you feel a bit sick, you would give anything for the ground to swallow you up and BANG, you are off and your brain flips into race mode - all is OK again!

On sunday, after 50m the gun goes bang-bang-bang-bang, 60m and there are yells of "stop, come back girls, come back"......what the hell.....a rather delayed false start. The field ease to a jog, then a walk and look back to the start in confusion. 5mins later and we are back on the start line enduring the worst 30seconds of racing all over again!!! Not fun!     

Prologue

With a major new chapter in my life about to start, and having often wondered about writing a blog, I have decided to give it a trial run and start making regular updates on my life. I don't have any specific plans about what I will blabber on about but I suspect running/athletics will feature highly alongside updates on our move to Yorkshire and anything else that happens to engage my brain.

I don't intend this to generate a high number of followers as quite frankly, although I think I have a pretty interesting and exciting life, I doubt many others will be that bothered about what I get up to - although I suspect my Mum (Hi Mum!) may become my number one fan!

So here goes.....