Alfresco PeteThe outdoorsy adventures of Pete

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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Well I’ve not updated since November last year!

Looking over my past entries I feel my blog  has lost it’s way  over the past year, instead of being a blog where I could look back and go “Wow! That was an awesome weekend” , it has instead ended up being a weight tracking device. So I’ll stop that now, and instead go back to it’s original purpose.

Sadly work has prevented me from having fun and exciting weekends for quite a while. So the next few posts will be what I’ve been up to between my last post and now.

So I’ve just weighed myself, and it would seem that my body wants me to get back down to roughly 15 stone. Here’s what the scales have told me…

Weight : 15St 1 3/8lbs | Body Fat : 3St 1 5/8 (20.7%) | BMI : 26.4

Fantastic stuff! So obviously exercise is good, but here’s the food I’ve been eating this past week

Snacks

• Bananas
• Apples,
• Peanut Butter Balls
• Raw unsalted Cashews
• Natural yoghurt with some honey
• Celery
• Sainsburys dark chocolate
• Coffee

Lunch

• Soups
• Cooked Chicken
• Salmon and cream cheese

Mains

• Various Omelettes
• Honey barbecued veg
• Sea Bass parcels
• Pheasant Breasts in Cider
• Mussells in Cider

Oddly enough, even though I’ve had a lot of good meals… I’ve spent a lot less money than I would have. I think this is because I’ve not nipped to the snack or sandwich shop; nor have I gone wild on “going off today” section of Sainsburys.

I believe this was the start up week, so the next few weeks the weight loss will level off. But I feel it was a good first week. It’s what my body wanted.

I sit here, five months after my previous post; waiting for the bathroom to clear so I can use the bathroom scales. In these past 5 months, I’ve moved house, properly taken up running, went to the gym 2-3 times a week and dropped down below 15stone, and was fighting the best I have for some time.

But in the past 5 weeks, it’s all gone to pot.

I stopped going to the gym when I lent my car to my girlfriend as she had to give back her company car. This meant it was harder to go fighting as well as heading to the gym early in the morning, not impossible; just harder. Once she got a car of her own, my little Skoda was mine again… for a whole day. The evening of having my car back I decided it would be a great idea to fracture my elbow.

Which has essentially crippled my activities for the past three to four weeks and will still do so for at least another 3 weeks. Not only has my exercise been reduced, I’ve had to rely on buses to get to and from work rather than cycling. My running stopped for a few weeks while the pain subsided and the movement of my elbow returned. When I finally managed to go running again, I was both mentally and physically screwed; I went from averaging 7 miles on a run to 2 (and a lot of that was walking!).

During all this inactivity I hadn’t adjusted my diet; I was still eating like I was exercising before! I felt fat and horrible, which finally reached a point last week when I got on the scales.

Weight : 15St 7lbs | Body Fat : 3St 5 1/2 (22.9%) | BMI : Can’t remember

I’ve put on roughtly 7lbs of pure fat, that was what I was expecting. So this past week I’ve started skipping in the mornings, stopped relying on buses and jogging the 3.2miles home. I also came across this article by Alex Payne a founder engineer of Twitter, which suggested a diet similar to the one that my mate and I swear by.

So, running, skipping and healthy eating from Arthur De Vany… lets see what the scales tonight will say.

We did it! Farcycle (pronounced Farcical) cycled the 57 or 59 miles that is the London to Brighton, we tried to cycle all the way there but people pushing bikes up the hills blocked the roads A LOT. Next year, earlier start.

Here are some photos taken by myself and another.

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So I’ve spent the past few weeks crunching in work, so fighting and a lot of my planned exercise stuff has fallen out the window. Surprisingly I kept quite healthy sticking to my natural sugars and low carb diet m’larky; and it was going so very well, until I may have stuffed myself with a lot of cheesecake, hobnobs and other sweety like things, due to a certain Lady.

So this week is the first proper week back training and healthy eating. Back to fighting 3-4 times a week, spinning 2-3 times a week, running and cycling back and forth to work. Also; due to the request of the certain lady I’ve also cut out the Xedra Cut from my schedule.

So I’m saying this is week one again. So here’s the info…

Weight : 15St 2 3/8lbs | Body Fat : 3St 2 1/4 (20.9%) | BMI : 26.6

Surprisingly a lot lower than I was expecting!