SAND .......................... AND SPINACH

It's Sunday morning. It's January. It's dull and dreech. The wind is picking up.
Yipee it's cross country!
Second leg of the Borders XC today at Spittal Beach near Berwick.
We went down early to help out with the registration. Peter and Jeanette from Berwick did the registration for the seniors while me and Anne did the registration for the two other categories - juniors and that sort of in between category of mono-syllabic teenagers who slouch along in their parent's/guardian's/keeper's wake.

Because the juniors star 30 minutes before the senior race I still had enough time to get changed and go for a warm up with Ian and Brian.
And then it was time for the race itself..
A difficult start along a narrow path through the dunes. Easy to fall or get boxed in.
However, once round the corner onto the main beach it's pretty wide open. There is a choice... "do I head in a straight line for where we come off the beach" or "do I dodge a bit down to the waters edge onto the firmer sand". It's got to be the later. I know it's good for you and I know it's good training, but I really don't like running on sand.
I just tried to get into a comfortable rhythm and keep the pace steady.
By the time we got off the beach and onto the cliff top pathway I found myself running behind Ian and Pete Buchanan.
And that's pretty much how it stayed for the rest of the race.
While Ian and Pete had their own wee race going I was trying to hang on to either of them.
At one point I thought I was doing not too bad, but in the last half mile or so they seemed to pull away a bit.
I knew that the runner behind me was not going to catch me so I wasn't too bothered.
Time of 29:14 and 11th place wasn't too bad. Only two more races left in this reduced series, but I won't be able to run the leg at Dunbar so I have to do the next.
Hung about at the end to watch everyone else coming in and have a bit of a natter. Then we collected the results sheets and headed home so I could fire up the Babbage Difference Engine and get the results posted.


Calculating results - the easy way.


After the race Ray from HELP kindly gave me a CD he'd picked up by Benny Carter. It's a profile of Carter's earlier works with various big bands, mainly in the 40's. But theer's also three numbers from Carters own quartet of the late 50's. Bit of a multi instrumentalist, Carter's main "thang" was the sax but there are a couple of numbers that feature him on trumpet.
His playing is mostly "swing" tinged, but there are a few boppish riffs, especially in the later 50's quartet numbers.
I've only got a couple of Carter albums and they are predominantly later works, so this is a nice addition.
One vocal track on it... "I Didn't Like It The First Time (The Spinach Song)" by Julia Lee And Her Boy Friends. Bit of a novelty number where Ms Lee tries to thinly disguise her growing appetite for sexual gratification as a growing taste for the titular vegetable. How that got past the censors in 1947 is anybody's guess.
Anyway, the CD kept me going while the Babbage chuntered away.