martinlittle.com:thinkThin

... knocks a huge communal bin over, then drives off. If your Edinburgh-area delivery van has a registration starting W483 and sports a broken rear offside brakelight, ask the driver if they would mind being a little more careful when executing 3 point turns and significantly more thoughtful if they do manage to do something stupid. Having Tesco on the side of the van makes it kind-of easy to work out whodunnit. :-|

I just noticed that it is International TV TurnOff Week. Woooops!

Confirmed for the 14th of May at the Jolly Judge pub in Edinburgh. Should be a laugh!

Although I have been watching TV and intentionally not exercising following the marathon, I have been trying to plan out what's next (as many of you have asked, online and off). On one hand it's tricky to say, and the other hand it's not.

The easy part is stating my two running goals for this calendar year:

1. run a sub-4 hour marathon
2. run a sub-40 minute 10k

Right now I'm keeping a close eye on MarathonGuide.com to see what looks interesting on the marathon front and Scottish Athletics for 10ks and half marathons, as well as the 'interesting' runs.

Last night I did my first post-marathon run of about 5 easy miles, which felt really nice. Knees are a little stiff this morning, but no major worries. I'm now training/preparing for the Great Caledonian Run (10k) on the 8th of May. There are plenty of my friends and colleagues running too.

This June I'm aiming for the Seven Hills Race, too. Training will be beginning forthwith. There is also a run with The New Town Hash Harriers in the offing.

So, quiet is a relative term, eh?

As you may have guessed, things are busy in my life right now (and have been for the past month+). They should be cooling down slightly for the next few weeks. In lieu of a proper post, here's a few quick links:

• E4 is moving to Freeview. Goodbye TopUpTV subscription, and perhaps you could get some good channels available at decent times of day, or else you'll see a lot more like me!
• Channel4 has some great election cartoons and .
• I'm embarassed to say, but Wednesday has become something of a TV-viewing night: it all kicks off with Relocation, Relocation, then moves on to the awe-inspiring, imagination-firing Grand Designs, following the (mis)adventures of people who choose to build their own incredible houses. Next up is a double helping (thanks E4) of Desperate Housewives topped up by a late-night double-showing of one of the best written, funniest, quality programmes I've seen in a long, long time: Scrubs.

It's that time of year, and the tree is looking incredible.

How old-skool are these???

I'm trying to get back off the wagon. ;-) In case you ever wondered what five pounds worth of beer looks like, this is it: one pint of Nastro Azzuro in Ricks.

We went on the London Eye yesterday. Definitely a very recommended thing to do.

Yesterday's marathon was incredible, and something that will stay with me forever. My time was about 4hrs 26mins which was slower than I'd wanted in my secret plan (sub-4hrs was the goal), but the weather was too much for me. Not rain & cold, but too much sun! My shoulders, neck & head are all bright red and I had sunstroke last night. Back on track today, though. HUGE thanks to my brother, my parents, Al & Ann for turning out to cheer me on, and special thanks to Hazel for looking after me last night, too. Time for sightseeing now.

British Airways lets me check-in up to 24hours ahead of take-off AND I can print my own boarding card. Word!

Over the last few days I've been watching the weather change from 0% chance of precipitation to 30%, then 40% and now ... 100%. Let's hope it stays away until the afternoon!

Back in March I asked for ideas on sponsorship for the marathon. Well, I selected three: one myself, one suggested by my mum and one suggested by Richard Bloomfield. In case you missed it, here's my marathon training schedule.

As I said, I already give each month to several large charities, so these were 'alternative' good causes which I felt were doing something genuinely useful.

My target is to raise GBP 1000 across the three charities, so if you wish to sponsor me, please select the charity of your preference and donate! Links are below:

• Comic Relief (AKA Red Nose Day) provides support in the UK & Africa to the poor and disadvantaged. Sponsor me for Comic Relief here.
• Edinburgh Cyrenians are a local group providing support and assistance to homeless people, with the aim of improving their shelter. Sponsor me for the Cyrenians here.
• Scottish International Relief provide assistance in war- and HIV/AIDS-ravaged areas of the world, particularly the Balkans and Africa. Sponsor me for Scottish International Relief here.

The site I'm using takes credit & debit cards to make things easy, and it should work for UK and non-UK cards just as easily. If you are in the UK, debit cards would be the best bet as more money goes directly to the charity that way.

If you would like to wish me well (or offer to deliver a pint of Guinness to the finish line), please leave a comment below. Thank you!

Following on from the last running update, this will be the last before the London Marathon on Sunday (17th). It's not been a great time for training due to the volume of work I've had over the last three weeks, so I'm glad I got my final long run completed before that!

• w/c 28th: 28th [9.66km in gym], 29th [11.39km in gym], 2nd April [19.79km]. TOTAL: 40.84km
• w/c 4th: 5th [6.47km], 7th [10.24km]. TOTAL: 16.71km
• w/c 11th: 11th [12.92km], 13th [6.47km]. TOTAL: 19.39km

Here's the summary of my training for London over the last few months: January to March and the rest of March, including the longest run I did (23miles).

Here in the UK we're heading towards an election, although for those of us in Scotland and, to a lesser degree, in Wales, the number of issues to select a party on is somewhat reduced; Paul has a a short roundup here.

The BBC has excellent coverage here, but has a small and interesting blog here, that's worth a read. They've almost brought some humour back to politics! If only the archives were a little less clunky to read, it would be near-perfect.

The FT also has an election psuedo-blog (subscribers only) as well as full coverage (catchy link, too: http://news.ft.com/cms/543e48fa-8727-11d9-9e3c-00000e2511c8.html ;-). Key things missing from the FT blog are comments, permalinks, intra-daily updates (& timestamps), RSS/Atom feeds and ... general accessability.

As ever, the Guardian are the cool cats of the class. On top of their blog is great, with good content as well as all the requisite features. They've even taken things one step further, with a Blair Watch Project tag on Flickr and a Photoshopping contest. Nice work.

OK, I'm still on. Knees are feeling ... OK. Hopefully just pre-race jitters!

Here's the important information:

• the four charities I'm running for should be being set up to receive monies via justgiving.com, so I'll send out details on that as soon as things are ready to go. All four were not on the site already. :-(
• Hazel and I are heading to London on Saturday morning, then I'll be registering, visiting my cousin and going to our hotel (likely to be the Travel Inn County Hall, seeing as it is just so convenient for both the station to get to the start, and the finish line
• we have a room booked for Saturday & Sunday nights, and should be meeting my parents and brother after the race; plan of action as yet undecided, and very largely dependent on how far I can hobble!
• We'll be in London for the day on Monday & Tuesday, hopefully meeting people for food & drinks. Paging:
  • Grant & Maki
  • Al & Ann(e)
  • Eric & Karen
  • Jim
  • cousins John, Liz, David & Andy
  • StuartB
• we'll be heading to Brighton on Tuesday afternoon, to visit my brother and hopefully to meet Tom in his natural environment
• the flight home is on Wednesday lunchtime

We're looking for some really good drinking & dining experiences to try when we're in London (OK, I am, and I'm dragging everyone with me ;-). So far Hazel has found Afghan, Lebanese & Polish eateries, but they are from a 2001 Time Our guide, so may be long gone by now (more . Any recommendations for great places to eat would be very welcome. They don't have to be fancy, just interesting with really good food.

One place that is on my hitlist is Tapas Brindisa in Borough Market. Are any of the restaurants on this list worth a visit?

My horse, Hedgehunter, won the Grand National on Saturday, after my other bet Clan Royal was taken out by a loose horse. Good start to being back in the UK.

Now that's what I call a shower. In the BA lounge in Heathrow. Miracles do happen. ;-)

In February, Rich and I set up a geocache whilst visiting a confluence point. We had quite some reservations about whether the cache would exist, let alone stay where we put it, but it seems to have survived: there was a visitor.

Highland Nick's report makes for some amusing reading, and it's nice that he recognised how much effort we expended putting the cache on the moor. Hopefully I can find a traveller before I leave California to bring back to Edinburgh. :-)

Last night I persuaded some work colleagues to come along to the Golden State Warriors vs Houston Rockets NBA (basketball) game, seeing as they were playing in Oakland, about 40 minutes from work. Being inside a real NBA arena was very very cool indeed, and something I've wanted to do for about 10 years. To maximise the experience, I had a hotdog (1 foot long, with mustard, ketchup & relish) and a beer. :-)

The game was good, although the Rockets, a team I've followed since 1996, were not playing their best. Yao Ming, the 7' 6" Rockets center, seemed a bit leaden on the court, and the score reflected the situation accurately with a 122-117 loss for the Rockets. It would have been incredible to see them win, but it was still a fantastic experience, and well worth the US$40.

I managed to take a stack of photos, which will be online soon!

I'm *finally* at an NBA game: Warriors vs ROCKETS! OH YES!!!

Sitting outside at lunchtime in this environment is very very nice indeed.

Here's a pic of everyone with a cameraphone taking a pic of everyone else with a cameraphone. There's a whole flickr world of them. I'll post that link as a comment.

Bluetooth central!

Finally there's a weekend day I'm not running, working or doing laundry, so I head to the city ... and the heavens open. Luckily, there's a quality wine bar close by!

Yesterday I met up with Diego and Russ for a barbecue and general Saturday hanging out. After one visit to Krispy Kreme and a tour of the Googleplex, we headed over to Fry's and can't have spent any less than an hour and a half wandering around.

Russ caught trying out the Dance Dance Revolution in Fry's.

Mmmm!