We won!!

Luke and I went to a charity curry/quiz night at the Concorde club on Tuesday in aid of the Rose Road association. We won first prize in the raffle - a champagne afternoon tea at the De Vere hotel. The last thing I won at a raffle was a giant pink pig that I called Bacon. I think it's now in the loft at my parent's house, I must retrieve it one day...

Map reading isn't my strong point

Not only do I have difficulty reading maps, I'm also rubbish at following multimap directions. In my 3 years of driving, I've had a number of bad experiences of getting lost/missing motorway junctions/wondering where I am. Often behind these scenarios I've had to make a judgement call on which way to go, and nine times out of 10 I'm wrong. For example, last week I was following multimap directions to a hospital in North London. Multimap told me to leave the M25 and join the M40. What it didnt tell me (and I'm surprised at this) is whether to take the M40 east or west. So as the junction approached I had to make a quick decision - East or West? I was heading for Hatfield, which unhelpfully wasn't on any of the signs, so I picked West. Why did I pick M40 West - because it was the first slip road off the junction, and I figured that's what multimap must've meant.... I realised 2 junctions on that I was wrong. I should've gone East. I don't blame multimap (well not entirely) I'm just awful at mapreading. So I've bought a TomTom, that should fix things....

Farewell QE2

On Tuesday Luke and I made a trip down to Mayflower Park to wave goodbye to QE2 - departing for the final time to her final destination as a floating hotel in Dubai. We joined thousands of others (mostly locals) lining the shore to wave her off, and it was all pretty atmospheric, especially when the fireworks went off around her, framing her towering shape against the dark skyline.

I love running in the dark..

I love running in the dark. Just me and the ipod. The darkness helps me 'switch off' from my surroundings, and 'switch on' to my me-time. This evening was an exception to the rule though - I couldn't 'switch off' completely - running with all the fireworks exploding around me was pretty cool.

On the Nike plus website I've entered a new challenge to keep me motivated, clocking one of the top 10 5k times for a chance to race against Paula in London. Doubt I'll be that good, but it all adds to the motivation factor!

Plod on.