Alfresco PeteThe outdoorsy adventures of Pete

The Background

I’ve been doing a lot of Adventure Running with Tri-Adventure these past few months. I’ve found them a lot more fun (and cheaper) than the novelty mud races that I’d been doing before. I had only been doing the trail running sections because my 2006 Specialised Hardrock is a little worse for wear due to my constant use travelling back to work and no time on the trails in two years, as well as no proper care and attention given to it from me.

Anyway a request went out on Tri Adventure’s twitter asking for help setting up a short adventure race with Tri-Adventure which was to be filmed by the BBC for Countryfile (aired on the 18th March 2012), and I thought since I was on holiday from work on the date and wanting to get into AR further I replied. I soon was soon in the New Forest teamed up with Patricia Daas and borrowing John Mayne’s bike having a brilliant time. During this race I also met Julie Jeffries, Andrew Woodhouse, as well Bruce Duncan and Nick Gracie of Adidas TERREX Adventure Racing team. After a great fun short  race, Patricia mentioned the Open5 in four days time, which is 5 hours of navigation, trail running and mountain biking. Since I’m new to this whole Adventure Racing m’larky and my new philosophy of say yes to new things, I decided to sign up.

Over the course of the next four days I managed to drag three of my housemates into it too… James a climber from Sheffield, Bruce a cyclist from Birmingham and Seb a runner from Germany. Seb had no kind of navigation skills, so I teamed up with him to be in the male pairs catagory with the his team name idea of “I hate Pete”. The newbies and I all meet in the Kings Head in Guildford the night before to discuss what to expect as well as having some food and good ale. I explain exactly what adventure racing is, and what they can expect… I didn’t quite prep them enough… nor myself.

The Race

As the sun started to rise on Sunday, Bruce drove us (with his £8.5k bike on the roof of his car) towards a the Priory School in Dorking. We sign up via “On The Day entries” process and plan our routes. James with amazing navigation skills chooses a route with few hills, Seb leaves me to plan the run with the idea of we’ll see what happens on the bikes, Bruce decides on the closest run checkpoint then onto the bike. After planning our routes, drinking cups of tea and many “What have you gotten us into Pete” from everyone, we head to the car and change into correct gear, collect our hire bikes, attach the map boards and decide what we’re taking to Transition (which is a good few miles cycle from the base). James, Bruce and Seb all cycle up as I’m finishing off checking my gear, I jump on my bike, start to pedal and suddenly realise as my feet slip from the pedals that I’m not wearing my running trainers, they’re locked in bruces car! I’m in my Merrell Barefoot that have absolutely no grip in the wet, mud or pedals! I can’t get hold of any of the guys on the phone and after much cursing I start cycling the few miles uphill to transition. I make it to transition with 5 minutes before start cutoff time. James heads out rather than listen to me grumping, then Seb and I set off after preparing our hire bikes head out for the run, leaving Bruce to fend for himself.

Team “I hate Pete” head off down towards checkpoint 31 “A silver birch next to an earthen wall”, we think we’re near it on the map, we meet a few other people looking for it, we must be nearby! Twenty minutes later we stumble upon it after a scream of excitement from a team we were in contact with (apparently lots of teams had difficulty finding it). With our first checkpoint on our dibbers, we start to head towards the next checkpoint. Things aren’t looking good as we meet one of the Open5 crew who tell us we’re way off track and we should cut through the forest to get to where we’re heading. Obviously, the wrong trainers, lack of ability to find our first checkpoint on our own, and a new compass had obviously affected my ability to navigate. We were well off course and my shoes were not good for slippery downhill, I fell on my arse many times which gave me an awesome cut on my shin and a giant hole in the arse of my shorts (I didn’t realise this until an hour later!)!

Thankfully on the way back to our planned course we run into Patricia who confirmed our position and we start to head towards our next checkpoint, which as we approach Seb tells me is a no point checkpoint. We quickly replan our route, and end up in a field with a farmer who had their Toyota truck stuck in the mud of their field, we offer our help and get them unstuck before continuing on our course. After a few wrong turns I’m starting to doubt my new compass, why did I not check it against the others in the shop!? We were still approaching our second point scoring checkpoint and we’ve already lost a good hour! After coming across another adventure racer, we compare compasses and they point the same way! I suddenly trust my compass and from here my navigation is correct and the run is easy! we take shortcuts we find the check points. We both realise that running is the our stronger discipline, so we add some extra checkpoints to the run course, leaving us an hour to get as many bike checkpoints as we can. We manage to get about 230 points on the foot section before heading back to transition to change onto the bikes.

We take off our wet gloves, grab a quick bite to eat, put our helmets on, discuss our bike route, and then put our cold and wet gloves back on, as I reach for the water on my bike I realise my my bike’s water bottle is still in the fridge in Guildford! Damnit! We can’t see Bruce’s or James’ bike around, so we think we must the last of our group to transition. We head towards the road and start cycling up towards Leigh hill, it’s started to snow and we wanted to climb to get our core temperatures up again after standing around in transition, however soon realise we can’t feel our fingers. We continue up the hill with the cunning plan of heading into the first pub we come across and warm our hands, just as we come up with this plan we find the English Steakhouse. As we got closer we notice a large collection of bikes with race numbers outside the pub, obviously we weren’t the only ones to have this idea. We quickly head in, get pointed to the loos (where the hot water is!) by the ten or so other mud covered, shivering adventure racers. We come back into the pub, get the emergency money out of my backpack and buy a cup of tea. We’ve got enough money for one… the battleaxe behind the bar won’t allow us to share. Seb holds the pot in his hands while I hold the cup. We didn’t really want the tea, but the hand warming properties were amazing amazing. A few sips later all us Adventure racers are shunted out the pub. Seb and I still needed a bike checkpoint to complete the race, we decided upon heading to the top of Leigh Hill again as we knew the way (we got a checkpoint on the running stage there).

We got to the top of Leigh Hill and saw that one side of the tower was covered in snow! If only I had a camera (and our fingers had some feeling to work it) it would have made an awesome picture! We dib in, and then head back to transition, we really didn’t know how long we could survive out in this weather anymore! We return 10 minutes under our 5 hour limit. Pack up our gear, and head down towards base again. As we head back to the school we pass Bruce pushing his bike up the hill to Transition, still no sign of James, we think he must be having a whale of a time! When we got to base, we realised he was standing there shivering in the school hall and had returned an hour early without doing the mountain biking stage :P He may not have enjoyed it as much as we thought :P

The Results

Male Pairs (31 competitors)

• 22nd Pete Akrill/Sebastian Freund 245 04:48:22 245 0 29, 31, 37, 36, 33, 30, 26, 22, 23, 27, 24, 41, 42, 20

Male Solos (55 competitors)

• 50th Bruce Woodhouse 160 04:59:51 160 0 29, 24, 41, 42, 20, 17, 12, 8
• mp James Battersby 170 170 0 29, 24, 27, 23, 22, 26, 30, 36, 37

The Aftermath

Needless to say, James and Bruce hated me for the rest of the day until we all ate our own bodyweight in curry and watched Moonraker in the evening. Seb surprisingly enjoyed it… and wanted to change our team name to be “I love Pete”, well I say, that he actually changed his mind again on the bike when he lost feeling in his hands.

I was told afterwards it apparently dropped to -2 Celsius! I think maybe I need to ease the guys into Adventure Racing with Tri Adventure, rather than killing them on a 5 hour race straight away!

Oh well Questars 6 hour Adventure Race this weekend! Looking forward to it! This time I won’t get as horribly lost! We’ll see how I fare on the kayak stage

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It’s a Friday night, I’m driving along the A40, Skunk Anansie playing on my car stereo loud enough to shake the mirrors on my car. I glance at the temperature monitor on my car telling me it’s randomly -2 and -7. It’ll be cold tomorrow morning! I’m heading to a De Vere hotel in Dudley, which is where I’m meeting Harry, who doesn’t know yet that he’ll probably have to be undressing me in a car park Saturday morning.

I arrive at 23:00 and explain what we’re doing here, it’s not an evening of gay loving and spa treatment that he was hoping for. He’s a little tempted by the idea of a casual half marathon bit… then I show him the video and explained that I would be running it all.

He quickly changed his mind and went no.

So the morning appears, we’re up, I have some eggs for breakfast and we head to Cannock Chase, park the car and start to walk towards the event centre. There’s ice everywhere! I nearly slipped and injured myself a number of times just getting to the event village. I pick up my racing number (I was originaly Runner #3, but they didn’t put the timing chip in, so they re-issued another number) 1076. Timing chip on, number pinned to my top. Gloves on, and harry leaves me to the crowd to go sit in my car draining my battery.

After 3 minutes of running avoiding ice, we hit our first hill, it’s steep. Thankfully short, quick up, then quick down down taking over quite a few people,  at the bottom we continue along a gentle climb for another few minutes before reaching yet another hill. These are incredibly steep! There’s ice on the trail, there’s lose rocks and stumps, the footing is difficult but I keep on going. This keeps on going! Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, up, up, down, up.. no flats. Just hills. After about the fourth or fifth hill (probably less than 2 miles in) I reach a gentle incline and slow down. I let myself be over taken by loads of people. Hell down south was nothing compared to this! I keep telling myself it’s just the hills section and that after a few more miles it will be flat simple running. I refuse to stop, I know the moment I start walking I won’t be able to enter the stride again. Thankfully just as I’m on the verge of walking, I notice Harry on the side with his camera out; I can’t let him take a picture of me walking. I throw the walking idea out the window, I’m back on my stride best of all it was starting to level out again too. Time to get my brain back into shape, which I did, just in time for yet more hills!

A few more miles I get over taken by a rather cute woman, I keep up let her run in front of me for a while (she had a very nice bum), then catch up and chat, before my breath is lost a few hills later and she’s now too far ahead for me. Slightly re-invigorated by the mental stimulation I make it to the first water station. I take a swig of water and instantly cough up the ice that had developed inside the bottle. I take this moment to walk for a bit, before hitting yet more hills. At one point I’m behind a couple who have a GPS watch, and I overhear them discussing how far we’ve travelled… 4.7miles and we’d been out for roughly an hour. That was not good news for me, I chose to tell myself they were wrong, I jokily winged at them and reached another water checkpoint.

Hills! Hills! Hills! I was starting to get use to it, I was powering through the uphill sections with my running power coming from my hips, then relaxing my body enough (the tai chi helped!) to flow down the hills. I only slipped on one downhill section, landing hard on my left hand. It felt bad, I’ve broken my arms in the past, this is nothing, Keep on going. I do and I conquer yet more hills. I reach the Bog of doom, we passed it earlier and it was covered in ice. One of the supporters shouts we’ve only got another two miles left. That’s good enough for me, in less than twenty minutes I’ll be at the finish line. The bog was cold. There was thick bits of ice (that had been only recently been broken) floating in my way, logs to trip over on the bogs bottom, I overtake some Manchester Frontrunner members in the bog and fight my way through the gathered ice to escape with frozen legs, unable to stop otherwise I’ll feel the cold seeping into my leggings and thighs. More hills, I join with some lads and we all take the piss of each other, until they start to walk. I carry on and told that the end is 200m up that hill! They said the H word! I was used to it! Hills are not a problem any more.

Pick up you’re pace Pete, just 200 metres left! There’s the finish line, there’s the big devil, keep on going! I see the red timing chip markers. I pass both and slow down to a halt, just then I notice Harry and event photographers taking pictures of me. Exhausted, grinning. I had completed it. Then the announcer said my time 2 hours 3 minutes! Much better than I thought I’d do it in!

2 hours 3 minutes! Much better than the 2 hours 13 I got at Hell Down South! And there were many many more hills here! I was pleased.

An energy drink, coffee and a snack later, I’m back at the car changing myself, letting my shoes steam, while Harry grabs a random car to help jump start my car.

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So anyone fancy joining me for some more?

Photos from http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2012/02/13/arctic-conditions-for-hell-in-the-middle/hellrun-30-tt-11-jpg/#overlay, Harry and http://www.randrphotos.co.uk/event-photos.php

04:00, I awaken rum still in my system from two hours before, my mind running through various thoughts, cock ups, problems, solutions, all in that half awake state… my brain won’t turn off! It’s not had a moment to actually organise my thoughts for the past week of rum and relationship issues. I want to sleep, I’ve got work in the morning. Frustrated at my inability to sleep I glance at my clock once more: 06:00. I’ve got work in 3 hours, I’ve got a run in 10 days, I’m not going to be able to get to sleep. “Fuck it, get up and go for a run” I tell myself, I blind myself with my phone’s screen that tells me it’s -1 degrees Celsius outside. I post on twitter my plan

"-1 outside, rum in bloodstream from 4 hours ago,

leggings on, headtorch on... Lets run! #12days12miles"

Actually, I was still in bed, but I told the twitter that I was about leave the door… that’s not true. “Come on Pete, get outside or you’re a liar” that was it. I got out of bed, found my running leggings that were loitering at the back of my cupboard, grabbed my headtorch, shoes on, found my front door key that had been lost for two days. Then I’m out the door.

6:15 is dark, very dark, my headtorch was working (just), I was surprised that I knew my way around the woods behind my house with nothing but a dying headtorch. My music player was giving me the last 3 hours of the Chasm City audiobook, and I’m getting quite jumpy, eyes reflecting my torches glare stare at me, a startled deer dived across my path, and a dog owner appeared from behind a tree all appear during the darkness of my run. I’m 4 miles and my head torch gives up it’s ghost, thankfully the sun was starting to rise and the I could make out the mud to avoid, the mud to go for and the virgin ice puddles to crack with my pounding feet to then get their revenge by freezing my feet. I finish one lap of my route (about 6 miles), there’s still plenty of time I think, my legs and body aren’t tired yet, I’ll go for another go for another lap. More puddles, more ice, more mud, more miles. After the second (shorter) lap, it was now bright and my body and mind were starting to get tired. I decide to head home, possibly with the thought of getting into work early.

The last mile to my house on pavement is difficult, but the people de icing thier cars and waiting at bus stops are staring at this mud covered man smelling of sweat and booze with a headtorch resting on his head in bright daylight, I can’t give up and start to walk the last half mile, I finally turn up triumphant at my front door. 9.5 miles done, 12 miles is looking possible.

I use my foot to slide off my right shoe, I then sit down to undo the lace of the left one. Frozen, my laces were frozen solid, the knot tight and frozen… no way to undo it. I deciede I’ll just have to force the shoe off with the laces tied tight and my foot snugly inside. Nope the shoes are wet, covered in mud and more ice… I can’t get any purchase, I start grunting and forcing the shoe in more of an effort to get the shoe off, 10 minutes, a lot of grunting and waking one friend later I had managed to get the shoe off!

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Warm shower and off to work I go, where I spent the entire day staring at code, wandering what it all meant… if only I had slept more.

To motivate myself to get running a lose the flab I had aquired over the past 3 months and get myself fit again, I decided to see what events I could do in 2012. So I created my race calender with all the events I wanted to do. I was unsure if I could get to running 12 miles in time for Hell In The Middle, but I thought I’d get a few runs in and see how I felt before signing up. It was looking unlikely up until I took a wrong turn on a Sunday run (1st of Jan), making a 5 mile run became an 8 mile run. After returning from that run I signed up to Hell In The Middle, thinking  a month and a half I’ll be able to get to the 12 mile length easily. The next week I managed 10 miles, I was well ahead of my training plan. I may even be able to start working on getting a good time rather than just surviving.

The following week (15th Jan) where I was hoping to cover 11 or 12 miles put off due to accidentally getting incredibly drunk off rum and ginger beer the night before, which supplied me with the worst hangover I’ve had for years, where I was unable to think straight, let along hold a coherent sentence in my head or tongue for two days. That sadly was the beginning of a rather bad week, I had the cunning thought I would join a friend at her Ju Jitsu class in Guildford as it seemed like a good way to go fighting when I’m crunching in work and unable to get to Shin Kick in time. So there I am tracky bottoms, old t shirt on a mat doing  the warmup, I’m following the other people doing lunges, pressups, squats..etc then we start to stretch, then in one stretch my foot wasn’t aligned with my knee… *SNAP!* *POP!* I instantly knew what happened as my fell to the mat. My knee had twisted, popped out and then almost instantly popped back in again (it’s an issue that used to happen a lot when I was younger). Various things went through my head including, ahh it will be fine! So I sat on the side for about 5 minutes while the warmup was finished, and with the adrenaline and endorphins running through my system I carried on with the session and then hobbled home. Thinking that it was ok during the ju jitsu, I was thinking I may even be able to run in the next few days.

Two weeks later still not able to run on it, a slightly alcohol infused jog from the train station (after seeing some Explosions in the Sky and Lanterns in the Lake in Brixton Academy) to get to the pub before they stopped letting people in (It’s all about motivation at the end of the day) sent the endorphins to my brain that reminded me running that is awesome! Best of all my knee seemed to agree! So Saturday morning, it’s 3 degrees outside I got my running gear on, shoes tied, knee support on (just incase) and left the house with the cunning plan to do a short jog to the forest I jog in and aback again, not entering the forest; just there and back. Upon reaching the woodlands I was happy, joyful and thought, bah! Keep it going, you know you can do at least a lap of the woodlands, just avoid the mud that comes up to your ankle and you’ll be fine.

An hour and a half later, I finish 7miles, mud up to my ankle, streaks of muddy water up my calf, thigh and knee support and socks sodden and brown, and upon taking off my shoes the shoes were steaming. It’s good to be back.

My mind was clear from all the things that had affected me these past two weeks. I’ve not wasted money on the hotel in Birmingham, nor the entry fee to Hell in the Middle… I simply have a new challenge.

Be able to run 5 more miles in 12 days…

Well here’s part two of my listening for 2011, it marks the downfall of Codies Guildford, starting a new job and the best festival I’ve been to, End of the Road festival

darkflamejam July 2011 | 8 tracks | 23 minutes

The June/July changeover was spent over at Hop Farm Music Festival, which started a bit of an obsession (and possibly my album of year) with the band The Head And The Heart, I had heard them from stalking Zo’s playlist, and then accidentally seeing them at Hop Farm confirmed the love, which is probably why they appear twice in this playlist. This month was very much a festivals of past, present and future, remembering my time at Latitude in 2008 with Grinderman and preparing to End of the Road with an amazing one man band of Bob Log III. There’s also an intro to a Musical I really want to see The Book Of Mormon, and a longtime favourite of mine Josh Ritter (if you don’t know who he is, you should get swept along with the video for The Curse )

darkflamejam August 2011 | 12 Tracks | 48 minutes

So I started my job at Supermassive this Month, you can tell this by the sudden leap in the play length of this playlist. Hiding the crazy by keeping my headphones on and getting on with my work. I spent quite a lot of this month listening to my End Of The Road unknowns playlist, so Perfume Genius, The Unthanks and Allo, Darlin’ appear in my list, as I decide who to see at the festival. It turns out that Perfume Genius wasn’t playing at EOTR and so just eroneously appeared into my playlist, I only discovered this when I couldn’t find any mention in the listings in my tent. There’s another discovery sent to me by Zoe and her discovery of Gypstep with Molotov Jukebox, which incidentally the accordion player and vocals are performed by Tonks from the Harry Potter Films. My housemate (James Battersby) exchanged our favourite movie instrumentals, mine being Clint Mansell – Death Is The Road To Awe his being London Music Works – 28 Days Later – In The House-In A Heartbeat. Tunng entered my loved bands this month, I’d been casually listening to them for a good year, but this month was the moment where I finally got them, I also found this with Diagrams (The new band by Tunng’s lead singer, although it took 2 months rather than a year). Tom Waits makes an appearance as I was reading articles on his future album but mainly because I watched the best mashup of the year Cookie Monster – God’s away on business. Pink Floyd have never appeared on Spotify much to my disappointment, so my cravings of listening to Pink Floyd had been filled with rubbish cover tracks they never hit the mark, however this month I made the link between Roger Waters’ and Pink Floyd (I’m truly rubbish at band members) and suddenly months of craving was released with his live versions of the songs I craved.

darkflamejam September 2011 | 10 tracks | 51 minutes

This month was the wake of End of the Road. Phosphorescent, Emmy the Great,Diagrams and Laura Marling all making an appearance on the playlist after their awesome live performances. Incidentally EOTR was the best festival I’ve been too, just the right size, every band that was playing I really wanted to see by the final day my feet fell off. It was so good, as soon as I got home I booked two early bird tickets to EOTR and the new festival their launching No Direction Home. I discovered the constantly updating spotify playlist BBC 6 Music Playlist, which is where the second half of the month comes from. The final track was a recommendation by Merv (who’ll hopefully be joining me at the NODR and EOTR in 2012) as a “You love Micah P Hinson you’ll love this!” (Micah also played at EOTR); Nathaniel Rateliff – Oil And Lavender.

darkflamejam October 2011 | 10 tracks | 46 minutes

This month, was a bit of an emotional roller coaster for me. Feeling quite depressed, worried about the end of probation in my new job and my exercise regime stopping all playing part. You can pretty much tell my mind wasn’t in the right state by the way the music styles change. We start normally, with me listening to DJ Shadow’s new album (which is much better than the Outsider which I couldn’t get into ). Followed by more Laura Marling (My artist of the year) who I saw playing at Guildford Cathedral supported by The Leisure Society (who I missed at EOTR) thanks to the awesome Lauren Carter. After an amazing performance of Joshua T. Pearson at End of the Road, he finally makes an appearance on my playlists, I love the way his voice, sparse guitar, lyrics and emotions just come together perfectly; it really struck a chord with what I was feeling at the time too. Upon reaching the Sigur Ros part of the sound track, I had started running again which was the beginning of getting myself back in shape both mental and physically. Things started looking up from here, which is why I went back to yoinking tracjs from the BBC 6 Music playists, and Feist’s new album. With the news of The Stone Roses getting back together, means that I want to be Adored makes an appearance (which when I was growing up I was always confused why he wanted to be a door). To finish an emotional month, William Shatner released the album Seeking Major Tom… so what better way to finish a weird month, than to laugh at it, so William Shatner singing Space Oddity just had to finish the month.

darkflamejam November 2011 | 7 tracks | 25 minutes

I had passed probation on my job at Supermassive games, which meant I was finally becoming myself in work again (you can tell my my playlist length reducing). I was eagerly awaiting Tom Wait’s new album Bad As Me on Spotify (which it still hasn’t), so the title track (released as a single) appears here. I finally bought the album in January 2012 after giving up on it appearing on Spotify. Everyone started talking about the John Lewis advert that featured Slow Moving Millie covering The Smiths – Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want which somehow this led me to the album Sing Me to Sleep: Indie Lullabies where a very good cover of The Smiths – Asleep appears, along with various other very good covers. REM announce splitting up this month and so R.E.M. – Country Feedback appears.

darkflamejam December 2011 | 6 tracks | 25 minutes

I remember blasting this playlist through my car’s speakers while driving down country lanes on my own heading a country house, where I was picking Julia up from the HP Christmas party. Country lanes, no one around, music on loud with no one around, it really is the best way to experience recorded music.

We start off with a little known band from Manchester that I discovered in 2008 thanks to a little welsh music store Diverse Music, which is in my opinion the best music shop in the world, always gets a visit from me when I’m back in Wales. the song resurfaced when I found the Diverse Music’s Best Of 2008 CD during a bedroom cleanup. We have a much Maximo park like band (but better in my opinion) in Bastille – Icarus. I stumbled upon a photo of an ensemble of musicians using accordions, mandolins, tuba, trumpets, violins and many more instruments while seeing what was on at Guildford’s recently opened G Live venu, I was instantly intrigued and Bellowhead was discovered. After a few listens I was hooked, tickets were subsequently booked for January. We finish the year with the deliciously dark sounding Fionn Regan – 100 Acres Of Sycamore, which is a mystery to me how I discovered it.

Well there’s my year of music. Let’s hope 2012 is just as good.

I love my music, and every month I make a playlist of songs that stick in my head and are generally awesome. Here’s my playlists from the first half of 2011.

darkflamejam January 2011 | 8 Tracks | 31 minutes

A lot of old tracks I quite enjoyed which surfaced into my mind for the beginning of the year. Paul McCartney, Little boots, Neutral Milk Hotel and The Decemberists all make an apperence. Two new songs entered my library in the form of an awesome acoustic anti war song Rise Against – Hero Of War which I seem to remember finding on a Swedish compilation CD, and the classic fiddle of Charlie Daniels – The Devil Went Down To Georgia which was throw down my ear canal by @ticklesocks

darkflamejam Febrary 2011 | 8 tracks | 35 minutes

Starting with a follow on from last month Mark O’Connor – The Devil Comes Back To Georgia with Johnny Cash vocals explains what happens years after The Devil Went Down To Georgia. Some classic punk from Toy Dolls – Nellie The Elephant invaded my memory which was then forcefully sung at Julia for many days. Some techno resurfaced this month including the awfully bad but so good Out Here Brothers – Boom Boom Boom before quickly getting back on track with good dance/techno (insert random sub genre here) from Daft Punk, Dr Meaker, Vitalic.  Finishing off with Skull Defekts and a chilled Joan As Police Woman – Human Condition.

darkflamejam March 2011 | 6 tracks | 27 minutes

In March I’m pretty sure I turned Scottish, starting off with some classic Mogwai, Arab Strap and Arab Strap’s Malcolm Middleton appearing twice with the upbeat Shadows and melancholy Carry Me. I think due to amount of Scottish I then went a bit crazy and ended up finishing the month Joan Osborne – One Of Us – Edit

darkflamejam – April 2011 | 5 tracks | 20 minutes

An epic track with a seriously epic video with Woodkid – Iron starts this month off. I may have ran into the front room in December when I heard it on the TV, thinking Julia was listening to good music, turned out it was the soundtrack to the Assassins Creed advert on TV. Belle & Sebastian – I Want The World To Stop, brings back memories of picking up a Bike in Essex (as in a push bike, get your mind out the gutter) in December and hearing it on Radcliffe and Maconie when they were on Radio 2. The M25 was covered in snow and the street with the bike was snowed in, this song only surfaced in my memory five or six months later to make an appearance on this months playlist.  This month finishes with Matt berry, who you’ll know from The IT Crowd, Garth Mergengi’s Darkplace and Absolute Radio’s voiceover guy, who really surprised me with his album being nothing like his on screen persona.

darkflamejam – May 2011 | 7 tracks | 29 minutes

This was a very weird musical month, some experimental things in Alexander Tucker – His Arm has Grown Long and Radar Brothers – Still Evil, and finishes with some Techno Swing Kormac – Wash My Hands, I discovered this genre because of White Mischief’s Steam Punk events; which annoyingly I’ve not been to yet as Julia always has something else planned for us to do on those evenings. It’s impossible not to dance to Techno Swing, there’s something about it. The middle of the playlist is a new albums from 80′s bands with new albums (Beastie Boys and Pet Shop Boys)

darkflamejam June 2011 | 8 tracks | 37 minutes

Hugh Laurie… who knew he was such a good blues singer? Still remember him as The Prince Regent! Anyway, a lot of electro indie, or whatever it’s genre it’s called. It’s good but sadly no memories are attached to the tracks for me. A uni friend of mine; Zoë reintroduced me the punk of The Real McKenzies, but it didn’t quite drag me out of the electro indie hole for long. The month was finished off with The Hop Farm Festival where a fantastic rendition of  Morrissey – You’re The One For Me Fatty (Live) was performed by Mozza himself, and he didn’t insult anyone!

Well that’s the first half of the music of 2011, sadly can’t remember a lot of my thoughts, as this was six to twelve months ago. I do remember spending quite a lot of time in the office developing Bodycount.

Expect the second half soon, where the playlists get longer (averaging about 45 minutes each), I have a job change and more festivals are visited!

So I thought I’d write down all the races I plan to do next year… and see if anyone fancied joining me

• 11th February | Staffordshire | Off-Road half marathon, through bog and swamp, because I missed Hell Down South this year |  http://www.hellrunner.co.uk/hell-in-the-middle/
• 19 February | Surrey | 2 hour Adventure  Race, Trail running and mountain biking |  http://www.triadventure.co.uk/sprint/
• 17 March | Surrey | 10k through mud and swamp | http://www.allabouttriathlons.co.uk/events_brutal-run.html
• 18 March | Surrey | 2 hour Adventure  Race, Trail running and mountain biking  http://www.triadventure.co.uk/sprint/
• 24th March | Hampshire | 10km night run | http://www.ratraceadventure.com/notorious/hpindex.html
• 15 April 2012 | Surrey | 2 hour Adventure  Race | Trail running and mountain biking | http://www.triadventure.co.uk/sprint/
• 13th May | East Midlands | Mental 10km obstacle course |  http://toughmudder.co.uk/events/south-eastmidlands/
• 17 June 2012 | Surrey | 3.5 hour Adventure  Race, Trail running and mountain biking |  http://www.triadventure.co.uk/experience/
• 8th July | Surrey | 5 hour Adventure  Race, Trail running and mountain biking |  http://www.triadventure.co.uk/challenge/
• 29th and 30th September, London | Two day adventure race | http://www.ratraceadventure.com/page3.asp
• 7th October | Cardiff | 10km Obstacle course | http://www.mhsurvival.co.uk/
• 27th October | Guildford, Surrey | 6km fun night run | http://www.allabouttriathlons.co.uk/events_night-fright.html
• November 3rd | Cheshire | Off road half marathon, bog, swamp, hills | http://www.hellrunner.co.uk/hell-up-north/
• Late November | Hampshire | Off road half marathon, bog, swamp, hills | http://www.hellrunner.co.uk/hell-down-south/

I’m hoping to get more interesting adventure races in there as I come across them. If anyone fancies it, give me a yodel in the comments or better yet in person.

How many times have you walked or drove along a country lane and seen this sign…

I bet you thought they were put there recently to warn you not to run over the ducks didn’t you? Well… you’re wrong! Below is an information leaflet issued from the Welsh Ministry of Defense from 1941, which was recently found lingering inside my head.

Be alert! Wales needs more lerts!

You may think that that duck wandering around in your back garden,

swimming in the lake or innocently flying over your head is just

there happily being a duck. Your wrong!

Ducks are able to fly, swim, float, walk and sneak (sometimes

disguised as dogs) into places unsuspected! Ducks are the

ultimate weapon spy in Hitlers in arsenal.

These weapons are deployed in many ways; some may be suicide

ducks: strapped with explosives, while some of the more aggressive

drakes spread typhoid with their bites; we also have reports of

ducks with mustard gas flatulence!

We have placed duck warning signs around areas of key importance

to the war effort.

Be aware (we have enough lerts now)

   Welsh Ministry of Defense

So there we have it, ducks and occultism all part the Nazi war effort.

Incidentally ducks are almost as awesome as Giraffes. Just to prove it… here’s some pictures

It’s November, it’s four degrees below zero, I’m and I’m at Longmoor Army Camp, Hampshire, nursing a slightly broken elbow. What am I doing here? Well I’m meant to be running  for 12 miles, through hills, swamps and trees. But the doctor says I’m not allowed to incase I injure my elbow again, so I’m here to watch some mates run, at least that was the plan.

Early in 2010 I persuaded a number of my mates from Wales to sign up to Hell Down South with me after quite a few drinks. So we started training at our separate locations. I was going really well until about 3 or 4 weeks before the event, when I fell and broke my elbow (drinking related), and the people at A&E that it was too risky in case I fall and land on my arm again.

So the day arrived and my mates drove all the way to the army camp from Wales: They persuade me to do the run, however with no kit I had to then buy gear from the Puma tent on site. Doing so meant that I was covered head to toe in Puma gear, I felt like some kind of Puma Flagship!

So off we went… After lots of running, bogs that were so cold ice was floating on the surface (and came up to my chest), various hills, fake ends, more bogs, more hills, more fake ends and yet more running we finally completed the run in 2 hours 13 minutes.

I’ll be doing the thing again this year!

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A friend of mine had signed up to the RatRace Greenbelter adventure race earlier on in the year; sadly due to an injury, he had to pull out. So after an email around the office, saying does anyone want it. I jumped at the entry, thinking that I had been training for Hell Down South and it would be a good little training test. The race consisted of a 10km  trail run, 20-30km of cycling, 1km of kayaking and random obstacles throughout the course. Two days before the event, I then managed to pursuade my house mate Marc to join the fun. So off we went to Kent on a lovely Sunday morning!

During the race we met up with a group of women who were just as unfit as us two, so we stuck with them having a laugh along the course. Marc and a lass he met decided to walk the last 10km and came in so late (about 45minutes later than everyone else) they got a prize!

As an entrance to adventure racing it was pretty damn awesome!

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