Tickled Pink

The inability to run has clearly not affected my ability to want and purchase new running gear! We may be entering the summer of discontent, but I am keeping calm and carrying on by doing my bit for boosting sale numbers and attempting to purchase more pairs of trainers.
I never used to like shoe shopping and generally found that all my outfit combinations could be completed by my vintage boots. Those of you that know me well will know exactly what pair of boots they are, as I'm generally either found wearing those boots or wearing trainers. I've yet to find an outfit that my boots don't go with, regardless of what a few certain mum's think (they do go with dresses I tell you!).

So this weekend I found myself in Alton Sports buying a new pair of trail trainers - (Adidas Kanadia TR3's WITH gore tex for you running geeks out there!) Oh yes - no wet feet for me come the cross country season! I'm slightly miffed actually, as I have since come home and found them on sale for almost £10 cheaper on their website...grrrrr!!!! Lesson learnt there - don't trust Saturday shop assistants!

Anyway - where was I?
I have slowly been edging towards the stage where I have more bits of running gear and shoes than 'going out' and evening outfits.  I can co-ordinate running outfits for a full week (including head bands) but am stuck for nice outfits after just two evenings out. This has all been put on hold whilst I've been on the bench and it's given me a chance to try and right the balance a bit. Which of course I didn't do and continued to scorer the internet for things to buy when I am 'back' to form.

All this sportaholic shopping puts me in a pretty good position for the next rant - what's with all the pink?

Seriously - there are other colours out there! Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with pink - I just don't understand why 99%* (*numbers not representative of any real statistic) of all women's kit is in pink. Is this a supply and demand thing? Because when I'm out at events I see just as much of every other colour - so where are all these runners buying the pink?
Look at all the professional elite athletes - when they're not wearing GB colours they're not usually in pink either. It just drives me mad. When the winter season comes and we're back to reflective coats again I guarantee the men will have a choice of fluorescent yellow, green or orange whereas in the women's clothes racks it will be yellow or pink.

Karrimor Hi Vis Jacket (Pic from Sweatshop)

Trainers as well - look at the latest 'On running' Cloudtech shoes. You can have black/green or blue/azure if you're a man and the women's shoe comes in...well pink/pink. Good. Well Done market research team.


Nike Running Shorts "Oh what a nice pair of black shorts - how can we make them better? I know - let's add a pink underlayer for the hell of it."

So if any sports companies are reading this then firstly - Adidas good work on the Kanadia's (they're not pink) and to everybody else: I'd really like to be able to buy compression gear in yellow - "Kill Bill" style (I'm looking in your direction 'Skins') and have you ever thought about all the poor men out there that might want to be visible in pink reflective jackets?

Of course - at the end of the day the colour doesn't really matter and it's how hard you race and whether you achieve your own targets, not what you're wearing.

Can you imagine being beaten by someone looking like they've fallen out of Kill Bill  film though? Seriously? Genius.

Keep hiding your credit cards!

Love Biscuit Nikki x

P.S The above gear (apart from the Kill Bill pic) can all be purchased from Sweatshop. I'm not advertising them, that's just where I got the pictures from. Oh and also I am joking about the Kill Bill thing (unless you've found somewhere that sells yellow compression gear then please inbox me)

Please hold caller: I'll be right with you...

Whoa - so I've been a bit AWOL lately. You could say I've been neglecting my blogging duties, or you could say I've just been hugely busy...read on:

Firstly, Mr Biscuit Nikki has passed his PhD! We had a few weeks of him being inseperable from his laptop and books but he had the final test last week (viva for all you fluent in academic lingo) and passed!!! As a treat I then whisked him away to Prague in the Czeck Republic and we spent 4 days trying to not look like ignorant English tourists.

I highly recommend Prague, it's a beautiful city and if you stay off the pub/club streets you can largely avoid the copious amounts of stag groups that are attracted to the fact that in many places, beer is cheaper than lemonade. We even went on a three hour tour of the city on Segways. If you ever get the chance to ride a segway I recommend them. They're really easy to get the hang of, as they are incredibly intuative and our tour guide insisted they are very hard to fall off of. I did prove this wrong slightly later on in the tour but wasn't hurt. Oh and Jon (aka Mr Biscuit Nikki) nearly fell off a cliff (no exageration). Again I suspect this was more down to our lack of skills than the segways, or our guide's ability to teach people (or the cheap price of beer).

We left deciding that we need to learn to speak the basic langage before our next Eurpoean trip. Letting everyone speak English to us just became embarassing when we knew so little about their native tongue. This was even more apparent when, after several attempts to point and gesture at the item or service we wanted, the shop assistant or waiter would simply respond with 'how can I help you madame?' Oh and we're also going to learn the art of packing everything into hand luggage to get one over on Easyjet (if you've travelled with them you'll know what I mean).

So we quite fancy Sweden and are now looking for a good way to learn Swedish. There are several bits of software around so we'll see how we get on!

After all the travelling excitment, catching up with work has been tricky. We've also had the first of the Yateley 10k Road Races, which went successfully and we're already gearing up for the next one. So I've not had a chance to get typing.

My next foot consultant meeting is coming up in a couple of weeks and I eagerly await his update on the old foot situation. Four days stomping round Prague gave me achy feet (really achy feet!) but didn't irritate the old injury - So that's pretty promising!

Anyway I am well and truly back! Updates a plenty and hopefully a bit more foot related excitement in the following weeks!

Finally a chance to sit back with a cup of tea and a good biscuit. Things have been hectic!

Or you could just say that I've been neglecting my blogging duties!

Keep Running and communicating using lots of pointing!

Biscuit Nikki x