Collide

The dawn is breaking
A light shining through
You're barely waking
And I'm tangled up in you

- Howie Day, Collide.

Stuck in my head since randomly looking at this group earlier today. I love those first four lines, which were beautifully apposite this morning.

Fitting with the title, rowing and OTC are colliding rather a lot at the moment... the last weekend probably removed all chance I had of breaking back into the 'decent' level crews, but am currently being aimed towards rowing with effectively the 3rd eight, consisting of 7 newbies and myself. Rather weird, being the most experienced and technically proficient member of the crew. Sadly I'm not the fastest as of the 5k we did on Saturday but I was only one place and 7 seconds off. With sufficient time in the gym turning my arse numb on the rowing machines I can probably break back at least by ergo time into the top 16, but at what cost? This coming weekend's race, just for starters, clashes with an OTC training weekend. Uhoh. As things stand I'm staying in Cardiff and rowing. I just have to hope that there isn't OTC the BUSA Regatta weekend as well.

And That's Me in the Corner

Maggot Racing

A fun weekend with the OTC. Saturday's programme went thus: map reading - a fun ramble around the countryside; route planning - in which I was accused of being brainy like it's a disease for dividing 5kmph by 1.6km correctly; and range shooting, which was good apart from one random shoot which looked like I'd sneezed because it was about a foot out. Oops. Sunday was a 6 mile Combat Fitness Test - 4 miles an hour with a bit of weight and a rifle. Hard for short unfit girls, who get put at the front. Tall boys who got stuck at the back marched along grinning, enjoying the ridiculously sunny weather and whistling/humming/singing when the PTI was further up chivvying the short arses. Favourite was "The animals went in two by two, hurrah! hurrah!" which sadly we didn't know the words, but got about 10 or 15 people humming/tumpty tumming along to, with me whistling a bit of random descant. Blame Diehard with a Vengeance for that one.

The highlight of the weekend though was Saturday night in the Officers Mess. Given that we were at a training camp this was a flatroofed single-step-up-from-a-portacabin but still, who cares when you have hobbit fighting (smallest people from each company trying to knock each other using only their legs, hands clasped behind backs, disqualified if they stop hopping) and maggot racing, in which I competed mostly because each team's three racers had to down a pint at the start and end of their lap. That was rule 1 of 3. Rule 2 was zips must be done up to the chin. Rule 3 was no biting.

This, by the way, is a maggot:



Having downed the required pint (which put me into an early lead, being the first off for Cardiff ) the course started with 3 sides of the main bar room around the chairs which penned in the spectators before going up the corridor to another conference room bit, crossing a line of armchairs on the way. Once in the conference room there was a line of normal chairs to be surmounted, a table to be ducked under, a pair of armchairs stacked on each other to be turned around at the end before a sprint back out of the room through a chicane of wall and table, down the corrider, back over the armchairs, back around the bar, jumping out of the maggot and downing the second pint.

Due to some nefarious business with the Swansea company people who were running the event I was held up at the jumping in stage trying to get my zip up and finally started hopping 3/4. At the armchairs in the corridor I caught up with the guy in second who was trying to wriggle over them. Adhering to the 3 rules I jumped onto him, knocking the chair over with him and rolling over him on the far side to jump up into second. Having pretty much smashed through the normal chairs and rolled under the table and sprinted back uninterrupted, diving headfirst over the armchairs and bounding around the bar right up behind the guy from Swansea in first I overtook him with the second pint. James, the Cardiff number two, then shot off and came home about 30 seconds ahead of the competition but Chris, number three, was so far ahead he was met in the corridor by the other three coming in the opposite direction and knocked back down by each in turn and despite a valiant effort (and my foot shooting out from the crowd to pin the back of the Bangor bag and drop the guy like a felled tree) finished a close second, being unable to drink fast enough due to crazy hiccups! A tragic occurence, to be sure.

Alumni Felstedienses

The Wikipedia article on Felsted School lists among the notable Old Felstedians one General Sir Richard Dannatt (b. 1950), British soldier and Chief of the General Staff (2006-).

In other words, the head of the British Army. A real gem for Major Christmas... he may even have been the one who inspected the biennial parade the year after I left and presented Sarah with a birthday cake.

Insert Cheese Error

2k time: 7:05

Not good... given that I haven't done one since May and it's actually an improvement on that, it might seem good, but actually without the month off pre-Christmas with a strained ankle tendon type thing, the getting fat over Christmas and the 3 weeks of concussion post-Christmas it could have been about 20 seconds faster... and it needs to be. I was admittedly doing it with the top 15 other people rowing for the club atm (a few have been bumped out due to being overqualified) but I came last by a couple of seconds... and 9 were under 6.40, so 6.45 is not an unrealistic goal. Ooh... hours of ergo fun to come.

The 600

Go tell the Spartans we made a sequel...

600 posts. Woohoo. Yes, this is one of those "I don't really have anything to say but I've been bullied into blogging" posts. I can't steal something from PostSecret because they're all Valentines themed cards this week, mostly bleak and mopey, and I can't identify with any of them. Sucks to be them. Although it sucks to be me too because I've got a 2k rowing test tomorrow and I haven't been on a rowing machine seriously in a month. It's going to be bad. Possibly horrific. In fact, it had better be. I need more bad stuff to balance out my reason to brave the overly commercialised sickeningly red and pink Valentines displays...

Nuggets

Battlefront fans eat your heart out.

On a less savoury note, Hilary Swank and Kevin Bacon eat your heart out.