Run Dobie Run :: London to Scotland - August 2009

Day 19

Day 19 starts in familiar fashion; I cannot get my body to move out of bed. A) its too cosy in there and B) i’m pooped. Eventually I get up and the running is not too bad, although my body feels useless. I know what old age is going to be like already. And i’m just waiting for one of my uni friends to comment on the fact i’m there already…

Bizarrely Ian and I have climate control problems. Whenever I am hot, Ian is cold and vice-versa. This can prove problematic, so we often segregate the van using the useful partition so that I can have the heating on and he can sit next to a window, crazy eh?

Sleeping is tricky when next to roads. Not only is there the noise that vehicles make on the road next to us, but whenever anything goes past the van shakes. Half the night you are cursing the noise and the other half you curse the fact that the van pitches more than a P & O ferry.

In the video you can see that I run past Ian shouting “it hurts”; it really does hurt. I’m now running on some sort of subconcious ability - if I start to think about the fact it hurts, I stop - so I basically have to turn up the rock and pretend it doesn’t.

The first run of the morning takes me to Corbridge. I phoned ahead to a Co-Op to ask if I could fundraise there and yet again they said yes; Co-Op are the way forward. Not only was this great news, bearing in mind that Corbridge is quite a small town, we managed to raise around £120 - which is pretty much the 2nd best day we have had yet, awesome stuff. It just goes to show that in some circumstances, the smaller places can be more succesful than the more populated areas.

The A68 is dangerous. Not as dangerous as Dangerous Brian though. For anyone that does not know who Dangerous Brian is, a) your a fool and b) go and look at YouTube. The biggest problem with the A68 is that the road and verge changes frquently. The road can go from being wide to narrow and the verge can go from being solid and flat to being soft and bumpy. This makes running hard and a lot slower.

Today also brought my next radio interview. Lorna gets my name right. Hurrah. For some reason people want to refer to me as a house elf as opposed to my real name. Damn them! The interview went well again although it has not resulted in any random sponsorships yet. I am hoping that people are waiting until I get to Edinburgh in order to sponsor me and help get me towards that £5000 target.

Whilst between runs on the A68 we got set upon by some cows. Maybe they ‘herd’ the radio interview (thanks Laura) or maybe they thought we were an ice-cream van, noone is quite sure. But they hung around for blooming ages staring at us. We made various animal noises, but instead of getting rid of them, we probably turned them on.

Ian cooks a curry for dinner and it is yummy.

Day 20

The wind is outrageously strong today, which makes running much harder. Crosswinds mean you constantly have to adjust where you are running - especially on verges - and any wind against makes things much harder. Obviously when the wind is behind it makes thyings much easier, but God didn’t want to help me today it seems! Darn it.

We have struggled recently to find places to fill the camper up with water. This is a problem for many reasons. Firstly it means we cannot shower. This is bad. Secondly it means I can’t wash-up; this is good actually. Thirdly it means that I do not have any water to take with me when running, which is really bad. As Dave kept telling me (bless him)keeping hydrated is vital. And fourthly and almost most importantly, it means I can’t have tea, which I can’t function without!

Vauxhall corsa offence by not letting us fill up with water at one of their garages. The tap was just sitting there and there was nobody anywhere near the showroom (I don’t blame them) yet Mr. Poxhall would not let us use any water, what a joker.

Oxford win again!! hurrah and huzzah. I genuinely did not know that was coming and was pleasantly suprised. I get to go home this week and prepare myself for the Oxford v Luton match on the 8th; should be a good game. None of this small club, rubbish football malarky. Oh. actually it is Luton not Mansfield. Never mind. Jokes aside, Luton and Oxford are probably the two best footballing sides in the league, so it should be a good game.

I end the day absolutely shattered, but our parking space for the night offers delightful views, which will help with the waking up in the morning.

Again I apologise for the delay - damn 3g again. I will not criticise the north for this; must be the laptops fault.

Day 17

Day 17 starts with me again in one of those rubbish moods. I am genuinely trying to keep on top of my emotions (by telling rubbish jokes) but it is getting pretty tough now. The first running session today took me absolutely ages as the weather was a nightmare. The fog meant I could not see further than 100 feet in front of me, there was no verge and many lorry drivers seemed to have a vested interest in killing me painfully. So I have the right to be moody!

As I am sure you could see from my running gait, my running is now getting slower. But it still is technically running and i’m getting closer and closer which is the key. I made it to Kiln Pit Hill, which consisted of barely anything, but provided lovely views. I managed to run the vast majority of that session too which was good and encouyragement was provided by my first Edinburgh sign - less than 100 miles now! Woohoo! The next run started with me sticking my bum in the cameras ‘face’. You cannot tell from the video, but I had sat on some chocolate and had brown stains on my arse. Good times.

Dinner tonight was not cooking with Chris, we got award winning fish and chips instead, and by golly it was lovely.

After dinner we calculated out fundraising totales, coming out at £3199.50. There are some more pledges to add on to this along with other collection money, so we are heading nicely towards £4000, good stuff.

Ian Hart arrives; woo. Good old Harty, one of my bestest buddies! He also manages to transport Matthews third cake offering without messing it up; within 2 minutes of CVS seeing it however, he almost sat on it…twice.

Day 18

Chris didnt bake, liar! He’s no Matthew Bolton. Thank you very much AGGIE for the Brownies, they were awesome. I’m talking about the edible variety obviously.

For some reason there has been a lot of banterous, slightly gay footage on this trip. I’d like to say it ended today, but it did not. Chris filmed Ian doing a wee wee to which I shouted pee pee, like a lunatic. For those who wondered why I shouted “pee pee”; it’s from Bruce Almighty and it made me chuckle; is that alright!?

Matthew bakes another lovely cake. Chris is very critical though; probably jealousy. Instead of criticising everyone elses work Chris, why not have a go yourself? is it because you can’t? Mwahahaha I love to use these blogs to take the mickey out of Chrissy. I really do like him, he just makes himself an easy target. You wait until this run is over, Chris will get me back, and some I imagine!

Today also marked Chris’s departure. He did not leave because I keep ribbing him because of his baking but because he had to go to a wedding in Scotland. It could have been anywhere, but Scotland?! Damnit! He just mosies on up to Scotland in a couple of hours to make me feel bad. Right, enough messing around!

Ian and I visited Newcastle today, which was good as I used to visit it a lot a few years ago when my Gran was alive, as she lived just down the road. My Dad - Geordie Dave - was from these parts originally and is most definately a true Geordie. We visited St. James’ Park where we ran in to a few thugs; that was just some of the playing staff - Joey Barton anyone? Talented footballer, absolute idiot. We hung around in Starbucks for a bit trying to look cool and intellectual.  Sadly I looked like I had ran a few hundred miles recently without a bath. Which is true.

Cook with Chris is replaced with Ian’s ‘A la Hart kitchen’ - see what I did there? Yeah - its been a long day. Ian starts off well, bringing back memories of Food Tech at Sir John Lawes school, Harpenden. Yes thats right, instead of being ‘cool’ and doing something manly, Ian and I, with the help of Eddie Pitcher took on the girls in the kitchens. And probably lost.

Ciao for now brown cows.

Day 15

Day 15 sets t he trend for the following few days; namely I can not get out of bed. Whereas this is not that bad, being heckled by cyclists is pretty bad! Eventually I set off with Jeff Beck - “it gets us all in the end” erupting in to my ears. Contrary to my lazy start to the day, I managed a good 10k, which is good. We headed in to Northallerton to do some fundraising, but everywhere said no. Damn these big conglomorates. So instead, we went to the bank to deposit  our fundraising totals; I must say I am very pleased with how we have done with the fundraising on this trip.

As you saw in the video, our camper continues to fall apart; the electric windows have now bust themselves. I would like to apologise to any Spanish fans for my comments on the video. I’m not retracting them, just apologising. Just kidding;)

Cooking with Chris. Sounds camper, than a night in a pink tent with Julian Clary. What resulted from this was in fact a lovely meal. I don’t think John Motson has any immediate concerns over his job though. Just how many times do you need to say “its lookinjg good”? Having said that, how many times do I have to say “fantastic”? We  are both silly sausages.

I also really need to stop laughing at my own jokes - bad times. Al Dente is not a friend of mine; dear god.

Eventually I gave Chris a 10 out of 10 for his cooking. But that involved punches, kicks and arguing. For the record, I give it a firm 9. That’ll be a first for Chris.

Day 16.

“By far the worst session yet”. Admittedly I say this regularly, but to this point it was the worst run yet. Still, I made it through it and that of course is they key. There is no chance whatsoever of me not making it to Edinburgh, but it may involve less running than I originally planned.

The first fundraising of the day took place in Newton Highcliffe. Eventually I managed to persuade the Tesco manager to let us fundraise there. Whilst I can understand that all these companies have insurance things to worry about and policies and so on. But the Co-Op - whilst not as big as Tesco - do not seem to have any of these issues. We turn up, have a short conversation and then they let us fundraise, also often with the donation of tea and toilets (use of). So I am very thankful to the Co-Op. Tesco could certainly learn a thing or two from you.

Now the naked video. The video told you all you needed to know; since then we have had 7 donations I think, so we need another 23 in order for naked me to be on the world wide interweb. Otherwise, Chris will add it to his personal collection. So come on kids, donate to see me making a huge fool of myself. In the video after I say “donate now to see the naked bits of me”, the laughter was because a group of young children walked passed as I said that next to an open window. Oops.

Again its Cook With Chris. Slightly less adqventurous than last night, it involved a cooking sauce and a lack of a cheese grater. But very similarly to last night, it  tasted great, so well done Chrissy Vernony Smithy.

Even though the final run of the night was painful and sore, the evening ended on a high. I cannot thank the National Police Improvement Agency, specifically Chris Johnson who got us a place to park, shower and computer facilities to use and a cooked breakfast in the morning. Thank you very much Chris and to the security guards who looked after us.

Whilst my videos are a bit depressing now, I really cannot help it! The videos are supposed to reflect (At least when the banter bus has parked up for the night) how I am doing and how the running is going. Genuinely I do not really look forward to the walking/running anymore! Walking takes ages and running hurts. But what is great - and constantly keeps me going, is the support I am getting from you all, it really is touching, moving and much appreciated and will get me to Edinburgh, so thank you very much all of you.

Night Night.