There’s nothing like a bit of banjo music to give you motivation to keep running. Even if it’s just to imagine yourself on the set of Deliverance and the creepy people are chasing you.
(NB: I’ve never seen the film. If you tell me it’s scary and unpleasant, that’s enough for me. I’ll believe you.)
So, while I update you on the latest from the Flying Beetroot, here’s some banjo music. Don’t worry, it’s not Duelling Banjos. Why would I choose that when I have such fabulous banjo playing from an Aussie band?
[Edit: Oops. Not Australian, British. Sorry. I shall sack my researcher. If I can find her.]
Roll Away Your Stone – Mumford and Sons (2009)
Remember Lesson One? (Read about it here, if you don’t.) I fell over on the very next run. Failed to get up in the morning and had to run in the afternoon after work on another warm day. Then I fell asleep in a meditation later that evening.
I got up in the morning after that. Anyway, who wouldn’t want to see this in the mornings?
I love to see the sunrise (she keeps telling herself).
Or even this (on a not so clear morning)?
This one’s for Sue Slaght over at Travel Tales of Life. It’s our local version of the Golden Gate Bridge In The Fog.
Oh. Except last Thursday. I didn’t get up. I knew I was working. I knew it was going to be 30°C that day. But the 6am alarm came and went. Hey, there were mitigating circumstances involving a visiting dog, an indignant cat and a need to run interference between the two. The upshot of all this was that I had to run 7km in the rain when the change roared through at lunchtime. I was a soggy Beetroot that day.
I wasn’t the only mad person out there. I’m pretty sure the beginner rowers from one of the local elite schools were thinking, “Well, this sport sucks.”
Before you say “get a treadmill”, forget it. Years ago, when I was training for my first tilt at Oxfam Trailwalker, I borrowed a treadmill so I could still train if the weather was bad. I used it once. And decided I’d rather run in the rain.
You’d think I’d finally have learned my lesson but I did the same thing yesterday. More mitigating circumstances, this time to do with technicians arriving at ungodly hours of the morning. More running when I really didn’t feel like it. The Gauntlet Thrower got a few choice words on that run.
So, here’s how things currently stand:
There is one more motivating factor, aside from the Spreadsheet and the fact that I seem to have made myself accountable to the entire Blogosphere. One of the positive side effects of this training regimen has been the change in my shape. Or rather, a return to the shape I think I should be. I have, in recent times, been developing what is hilariously (if you don’t have one) called a “Muffin Top”. That’s what you get from middle age and too much chocolate. However, after just a few weeks of running, the Muffin Top is shrinking and I now possess something more akin to a pancake (American Hotcake, not French Crepe). Hopefully before this is done, that too will be gone.
Master of Something I'm Yet To Discover 
Oh you are so funny! An American Hotcake you say? Well good for you. Thank you for the link and your bridge looks far more peaceful than the San Francisco look alike. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s still a rather fat and fluffy hotcake but it beats the muffin.
The bridge only has one lane on it so at even the busiest times of the day there’s only ever about three cars on it at once. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Admirable work H! I do admire what you have set for yourself to achieve. Lovely photos too. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Barbara. Especially for reminding me that maybe this is something of which to be proud. I spend rather a lot of running time thinking I must be nuts. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Go you! Rah! Rah! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Gee, those pom poms are getting a regular workout, eh? 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I raise a bowl of rice pudding in your honour! Cheers! Go, beet root, go!
LikeLiked by 2 people
You always make me laugh, Maggie! (Argh! Rice!) Thanks! 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
A good laugh! Understood mitigating factors! And the treadmill thing! I’d rather run in the rain too!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I couldn’t believe how tedious it was, running on a treadmill. At least out on the path/road, there’s things to look at, people to say hello to (or at least grimace at). Even in bad weather, I’m never the only mad runner out there. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh yes, running on a treadmlll always made me feel like a hamster on a wheel. I adore Mumford and Sons, by the way, and their banjo work on this rivals that on “Deliverance.” What do you use, Heather, to so gracefully plop a song into a post? I fear I am getting behind on all this music technology….awesome about the great vanishing muffin top too!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I wish I could play like that. One of my summer holiday tasks is to get back to the banjo and put in some serious work.
You insert audio in much the same way as you insert an image. Just choose audio instead of image when you use Add Media. (Sorry I can’t be more specific, I’m away from my laptop and on the phone.)
LikeLike
OK, I’ll fool around with it. I know how to do a YouTube video for music but not this nice sleek bar that you used. I like it! I must learn how! Thanks, H.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s a matter of uploading the mp3 file and inserting that. You’ll figure it out easily. 🙂
LikeLike
Figured it out, H. However WordPress informs me that I must upgrade my blog to “Premium” whatever that is to insert an mp3. I can only figure out one thing per night, so I will put this for another day!
LikeLike
Oh. I forgot about that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good work Beetroot! I love the foggy photo with the 2 boats. It’s so peaceful and beautiful early in the morning.
… and I’m SOOOO jealous that you are losing your muffin top ( I really dislike that expression). Must I be the only person in the world who DOESN’T lose weight when I’m training?!!! IT’S. SO. NOT. FAIR!!
Happy running!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love it in the early morning once I’m out there but when that alarm wakes me up and my brain says “Get up, you have to run seven kilometres,” the rest of me goes “Urgh.”
You’re right. It’s SO not fair. Sorry about that.
LikeLike
I’ve always maintained that the most difficult exercise in the world is getting out the front door.
As you said, once you’re actually out … it is glorious!
LikeLiked by 1 person
You have never had, nor ever will have, anything even remotely approaching a ‘muffin top’. Just sayin’…… Good that your getting your fitness back, though. On yer!
>
LikeLiked by 2 people
I don’t think you’ve been paying attention. Or I’ve been hiding it well. 🙂
LikeLike
You clever old thing !! 🙂
Your daily routine is a demanding one, and I’m chokka with admiration for your persistence, doggedness and general determination. And if they’re all synonyms for one another, so much the better.
I don’t believe the muffin top either, btw …
{grin}
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ll confess, M-R, that some days I wish I’d never put it out there what I was doing. But then, that’s why we’ve done it, isn’t it? To make us stick at it. I think I’m glad (she says as she contemplates once again the 7km run she must do in the early morning…).
LikeLiked by 1 person
And that’s what you’ll go on thinking till it’s over.
And then you’ll be SO CHUFFED, you won’t know what to do with yourself !
LikeLiked by 1 person
A muffin top – yeah right. That is so ridiculous. I am glad you are feeling improved but you can’t go throwing terms like that around or the rest of us will be needing to upsize our terms and I am not ready for that.
LikeLike
I should have taken photographic evidence….Okay, so it may not have been a Texas Muffin Top but there was definite overhang from where I was looking.
LikeLike
Delighted you are vanquishing your Muffin Top! Though 7km in the rain is just a little extreme 🙂 I liked your music, and the puffing beetroot is quite irresistible!
LikeLike
Thanks, Jo! I ran 10km on Sunday with a blinding headache. You should never give a spreadsheet to someone with an obsessive personality. 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person