The waxing!!

Derby open day 25th Feb 2012
Companion Care Derby held a very successful open day at the surgery on Saturday 25th February. Thank you very much to Amanda Stalker, our Head nurse, for all her work arranging sponsors and support for the day. Amanda also set up the surgery for tours and we had a ‘vet’ playroom for children, Amanda’s miniature Vet surgery model which is amazing and a couple of stuffed toy dogs in the kennels and on the table in theatre.
I would like to thank Pets at Home for all their support and especially Rob and James who volunteered to have their legs waxed and Lisa for her amazing fund raising for the leg waxing and for running the Raffle and cake stands. Thank you to Sally’s mom, Lisa and Jess for donating cakes for the cake stand. Delicious! We raised £66.50 from the sale of cakes.
Mark from Pets at Home also brought in his own rabbits for a guess the weight competition and organised a guess the breed competition.
The leg waxing was very well attended and Sarah, Sharon, Amanda and Sally from the East Midlands School of Health and Beauty were brilliant, I barely felt a thing, thanks ladies! 2 days later it is getting a little spikey and my legs are still cold! About £130 was raised as a direct result of the leg waxing.
Thank you very much to Jennifer from 'Where to Walkies' for supporting us with her lovely dogs Troy and Paris. If every you are looking for somewhere to walk your dogs log on to www.wheretowalkies.co.uk
I also need to thank our sponsors of prizes, Hills and VBS Direct, your donations were very much appreciated and helped us raise £81 in the Tombola/Raffle. Thanks again to Amanda and Amanda’s mum for their generous donations and Amanda for nicking your husband’s beer for the stand! Pets at Home for sponsoring prizes.
In all we raised just under £400 for the weekend!!
We still have a few ongoing competitions including a raffle for £25 worth of Jamie at Home products, Derby’s prettiest pet (first prize is a £99 professional photo shoot, print and disc with photos) and obviously we are still accepting donations to the Dogs for the Disabled Charity cycle challenge.
Thank you very much to everyone involved and who helped out, I really appreciate it very much.
Jason

Tingly

Well just did 22 miles afre yesterdays 60. Legs fine, backside surprisingly fine, hands not so great. Pins and needles in right hand. Left shoulder sore as torn rotator cuff playing up from all the arm pressure.

Unfortunately can't adjust the bars any higher. So done some reading. Apparently a solution to the padding issue may be foam hot water pipe lagging.

Off to homebase tomorrow to experiment cos after 1000 miles I think the hands may be in serious trouble. Not good for a surgeon!

The next barrier

On Sunday I managed to get out on the bike. I had planned to get up at 6 to walk the dogs and get on the road by 7. But I had to take pity on Vicky, not wanting to disturb her too much getting up at such an ungodly hour on a Sundaye especially as she works on Sundays, so I deferred my decision by an hour and got up at 7. Even so I heard the utterence "freak" from the snoozing side of the bed as I got up.
I got on the road at just gone 8. I did my usual circuit of the village encompassing the hill into catsfield, the long incline up to North trade road and finally Standard hill back to Ninfield. I have decided that I should try and push things a bit further for each weekend ride. So I did the 8.5mile circuit 7 times.
W.I.T.T happily informed me that I had completed 60.55 miles in 6 and a half hours. I got through 2 bananas, a bottle of isotonic energy drink and 4 sachets of "Go gel".
Legs not feeling too bad today, so I'm off in a minute for a bit of a recovery ride of 20-25 miles. Depending on when/if the heavens open.

The snow has finally melted and the snowdrops and daffodils are popping through the lawn so spring is on it's way!
If it wasn't for the wind and rain I would be on my bike every day!!
I am nearly completely out of time (and excuses!) and the training is starting in ernest now for the final 9 weeks before we all hit the road.
Fund raising is a little slow but we have an open day planned for Saturday and this will hopefully help close the gap a little in what we still need to raise.
I have somehow managed to get myself commited to a sponsored leg wax! Luckily two of the Pets at Home guys have kindly volunteered to join me and we're going to try do it as a race, hopefully this means it will be over sooner and they will scream louder than me, thereby making me look the toughest!
I am starting to really look forward to the cycle.

Pancake Day

Another successful support office fundraiser took place yesterday. Debs and Kat donned their aprons and cooked pancakes (from scratch!) in aid of the cycle ride. An impressive 40 pancakes were made and sold raising another £40 for the charity pot, thanks to the irrepressible appetites of the support office residents.
Jen

Open day

On Saturday we held an open day to raise some more funds. The nurses did a great job baking cakes and dog biscuits for sale. Lisa was a whizz at face painting for the children. But I think if she never paints another butterfly it will too soon for her. We had Monica join us with her DFTD dog Erin who is now retired but still likes to help out.

We did some surgery tours and managed to register a couple of new clients.

Citygym very kindly donated a recumbant exercise cycle for the day. Set up in reception I started cycling at 9.30 and finished at 4. Had a couple of short breaks. Managed about 135Km. But the next day and still now my left ankle is very swollen. Not sure it did much to help the "man-flu" either.

I am feeling pretty pooped in the picture.

The last client of the day was actually a previous LEJOGer. He did it about 20 years ago with only 12 gears and very little training. So we had a good chat. He said he found it relatively easy and said we would probably surprise ourselves. Their aim was 12 days and they did it in 9!

All in all a good day and we raised £160 for DFTD.

Conspiracy

Life is conspiring against me. Training just not happening at the moment. The roads round here are still lethal on 4 wheels with a couple of tonnes over them. I dread to think what would happen in 2 square inches of rubber at 20 miles an hour through black ice.
Work has meant I have had little time for the gym. Not that I'm complaining about being busy but still frustrating.
Now car trouble has been thrown into the mix. Not starting on cold mornings. Have drained the battery twice this wek trying to start the thing, and had to call the AA. They are going to start charging me soon!
Today it happened again. Luckily a mate drove past the house and had some jump leads so I made it to work on time.
So I have tools and new glow plugs in the car and will be trying to change out a set of glow plugs in the car park!
I hope I can get to the gym a few times this week.