David Guiza II

Daniel McLay (turns out it was third place, but still, I'd argue it beats a YouTube upload).

There's a Banbury 15 (miles) around Feb/March which is a good marathon warmup run and pretty accessible to anyone midlands based. A little rural and hilly, but a good tester for the legs and a race distance you wouldn't tend to get too often.

Didn't realise we were overran with Longslade survivors on here. I still think of those glorious days when passing any sewage plant. As an aside, my wife had to go there a few years ago when she was still in teaching, as her old school was part of the same trust. She sent me a photo of a big display of ex-pupils called 'Cedars Superstars'. It somehow didn't feature a lad from my year who won a stage at the Tour De France, but did feature a series of chaps I went to school with who put some music videos on YouTube - so that's great. Back on news, to an extent, this is an interesting one. I can picture a few claims being made by the flask brigade if we ever score again - Kent man deliberately fell on Ipswich Town fans, trial hears - BBC News

I don't doubt the rest, but having better teachers is a myth. You don't even need to hold qualified teacher status to teach in a private school. I somehow drive past three private schools on an eight mile trip into work every day and the facilities are ridiculous. This coming from a man who played cricket on a gravel car park at Longslade; the sports facilities in particular are unreal. It's no great surprise that tennis, athletics, rugby etc are stacked with ex-private school students.

Warwick is a good one, albeit quite expensive, in February. A little undulating but the final 4k is downhill, so if you can get yourself to a good place at 17/18k then you're well away. I've got the Abingdon Marathon on Sunday, so of course I've now been hit with a cold. Garmin Predictor down to 3:00:07 - which would be simultaneously amazing and awful.

Living and working around Leamington isn't ideal at the moment. Been here for 5 or 6 years and the number of Cov shirts has increased exponentially in that time, which is grim. I grew up in North Leics so I'd never really been overly fussed by them, particularly given their utter obscurity for the past 20+ years, but it is becoming grimmer by the week. The few Cov fans I know on speaking terms are now beyond amusement and into genuine sorrow for the plight, having gone through similar. Which, in many ways, is worse. My faint hopes of a Forest/Cov relegation double and Leicester promotion become fainter with each week, too. Fun! That said, I wouldn't be overly surprised for at least two of the promoted clubs to be rooted in the relegation zone come Christmas. I guess it's dependent on whether the likes of Fulham and Sunderland can sort themselves out; you'd suspect Villa/Bournemouth and probably Forest too will climb the table.

Genuinely astounding that he could be relegated 5 times in 5 seasons. I don't even know what the equivalent in a 'normal' job would be.

Been trying to decipher when the last time England and Leicester played on the same date. Best I can get is 25/10/1961 when England played Portugal and Leicester played Atletico Madrid. Any advance? I remember hearing about Mark Hughes playing for Wales and Bayern Munich on the same day, so maybe it has happened more recently than that.

I saw the clip in The Guardian Football Weekly about it being somewhat of a culture war between traditional football fans and a Green Party voting Vegan with long hair and would like to add, as a leftie vegetarian, that's not true. Also reminded me of this classic banner from Villa, think it was aimed at David O'Leary:

Bit late to the party - but if you read and enjoy Stoner then I'd recommend Any Human Heart by William Boyd. Similar full life novel approach covering the fictional life of a chap throughout the 20th Century, there's an adaptation (ITV, I think) too.

Discovered yesterday that Gelson Fernandes is very high up at FIFA. Remember being really excited when we signed him, but the only memory I can conjure is him scoring at The City Ground when Kasper was sent off.

I watched an episode of Mastermind from the mid-70s on BBC4 the other day because I'm a right laugh, and I did not realise how subjective the questions were back then. Nowadays there is very much a definitive answer, but there were various questions along the lines of 'what is meant by the term 'offside' in football?'. Very odd! Bamber Gascogine also dropped the N-bomb followed by 'blacks' in a question about boxing - it was quite a ride.

Mixed bag at the GNR on Sunday. Started soooo far back as the congestion to the start was worse than ever, presumably due to Burnham running. I'd never seen so many active snipers on top of high-rise buildings etc. Felt very end of days. Got around in 1:26, but had hoped for a couple of minutes quicker - killed off by the undulating miles between 8-12. Ultimately I think events like the GNR and London are more about the experience than the time, though. Managed to bag a place for Abingdon Marathon in mid-October. Has anybody run that before?

Great North Run on Sunday for me too. I've done a really solid 12 week training block and my Garmin predicted times have gone right down; so obviously I'm feeling totally unprepared.

His name is Josh Simons. Josh Simmons plays for for the Kansas City Chiefs. Although, Burnham may have gone rogue. Graeme Cooke was hired for this role in July. Otherwise, bang on.

A little Schrodinger's cat for me in that I both care immensely and not at all. Results like today leave me a sense of hopelessness and foreboding, which is a clear indicator that it still hurts and the care is there. However, the club is so far from what I fell in love with that it's difficult to care as much as I would have done in the past. One of the biggest feelings right now is embarrassment, which is an odd one for something that I can't control in any way shape or form. However, as somebody who is surrounded by fans of other clubs and living outside of Leicestershire, it's genuinely embarrassing to be associated with the club at the moment.

His setup has always been susceptible these sorts of hammerings, even during his better time at Southampton in the promotion season they got hammered 5-0 at Sunderland and the same again at our place. His Rangers side also lost 9-1 on aggregate, including a 6-0 defeat, to Club Brugge. He's statistically the worst Rangers manager of all time and yet the plebs in charge were still wowed by him because he talks like a LinkedIn David Brent. Every single week for the past 2 years I think it can't get any worse and then it does. At least the clubs before us who took this kind of nosedive, like Pompey, Cov etc can point to finances and other factors. We've still got a huge budget, still spending money, and still getting worse. It's genuinely mind boggling as to how somebody could run a club so poorly without intention to do so.

Cheltenham is the weekend before and a decent course. A little spenny, though!

I've had a couple of pairs of EVO SLs over the past year or so and really enjoyed running in them, but I do think they have a tendency to cause injury if you're prone to certain injuries. Just as a heads up! I suffer from achilles tendonitis and I think the soft mid-foot doesn't do my any favours, but if you're not particularly prone to anything like that or plantar fasciitis etc then you'll probably be fine. Rotating between two or three pairs (budget depending, of course) is definitely the best route. A slow/recovery shoe, a race shoe, and an allrounder.

Robbie Fowler as well in the same window. Manager wise - weren't we quite strongly linked with Mike Walker before O'Neill got the job?

Moved my long run from Sunday to Saturday and incorporated parkrun as the pickup. So much easier to increase the pace when there are hundreds of others there and not just a lonely man sweating and breathing out his backside. I'd definitely recommend to anyone looking for any quicker intervals as part of a long run.

I think they still owe Cov money from when they signed him a couple of years ago, so I suspect that'll just clear that debt.

Anybody going to any of the European Champs action in Birmingham next week? Managed to get a couple of tickets months ago and realised it's the men's 400m final amongst others, which should be fun. I've also signed up for a terribly boring marathon in late September in an attempt to break 3 hours, after minor disappointment in London in April. All the indicators suggest I should be able to crack it, but I think it's a fuelling/conditioning problem as much as anything. My PBs get progressively worse from 5k to the marathon in terms of the percentiles (top 1/2% for 5k, whereas top 6-8% for marathon and half marathon). Also can't decide what's worse out of the Jan/Feb dark downpours or July sweatfest for marathon training. Probably the latter!

Agree with the overall lack of excitement in the signing. However, in terms of the previous stint in this league, I think you could only really include Michael Morrison and Nicky Adams in that bracket and neither worked out in profit terms. Those aside, Dyer was 26, Tunchev was 27 and the remainder were mid to late 30s or loans (Dickov, Edworthy, Powell). We've also got a much younger squad to begin with - Andy King and Maxi Gradel were probably the only two regulars who weren't seasoned pros. This time around it's likely we'll have 5 or 6+.

Managed to fall over like a pensioner from one of those rise and recline adverts on ITV3 on Tuesday and have been nursing the cuts and bruises since. I think that's the first time I've fallen over whilst running since the Brown administration, so i'll take that.