Playoffs

Just settling in for the next couple of months....

The Running Man - Day 1

It's somewhat ironic that today is the tenth anniversary of my PhD defence. What better way than to celebrate with punishment a bit more physical this time, than mental? No having to remember electron counting and so on, just keeping going in the teeth of a snow/hailstorm and temperatures barely above zero. But just like sitting there looking at a blank screen when writing the first page of a thesis, you've got to start somewhere, no matter how daunting. So let's get on with it.

I managed to find a pair of running shoes from a running shop in Kensington on Saturday on my way back from the Ship, including analysis of my gait from the assistant and trying various pairs on. In the end, it came down to colour, and neon yellow isn't really my thing. After a morning of sending another job application that I'm quite excited about (they want a PhD with experience in inorganic chemistry!), I did the first task on the walk/run in 8 weeks plan today; walk 2 mins, run 1 min, repeat x 10. Wasn't sure how well I'd do given I was a bit out of breath running for the CTrain on Saturday morning. I was pleasantly surprised. I was out of breath at the end, but not terribly so, and the robot leg held up well. The printout from the GPS tracker on my phone is on the right. Quite what happened in the eighth running period I don't know (I suspect it's crossing my route), but I can assure you I didn't turn into Mo Farah for sixty seconds (the phone tells me I was running at 5:24/mile pace, which is nuts). The good thing is you can see on the graph where I was running (peaks), where I was walking (troughs), and that the speed was reasonably constant, especially in the second half when the weather turned quite ugly.

There was one lesson learnt: it's better to choose a longer route than shorter. I chose a route that was about 2 miles, based on my walking speed. And of course, forgot that I actually run, not walk, and so I was almost at Beige Towers on the seventh cycle, and so had to keep going round the block in circles. If anyone was watching me out of the window they'd be wondering what on earth I was doing.

So not quite as chastening as I thought it was going to be. Almost three miles in half an hour, which is what I was shooting for at the end of the program, so I'll be interested to see what I can do in 30 minutes by the end. Not quite the "runner's high" I keep reading about on the internet, but not bad either.

Speed

There isn't going to be any outdoor football for the May-July spring season because we're having a bit of trouble raising a team. That's not a great loss for late May- early June due to the fact it's the wettest part of the year. And my leg has been struggling a bit with indoor football, almost two years on from anklegeddon. I've decided to embark on walk/run program that will have me, after eight weeks, running 5 km in roughly half an hour (that's roughly ten minute miles). A good aim to begin with. 

So I found an app for my phone that I can set the times for walking and running (90 seconds walking, 60 seconds running for the first day, whenever that is), and have also found an app that maps your run, plots your speed, breaks the speed down into each minute walked/run, counts calories burnt (based on height, age, run through the phone's GPS). I gave it a test run this afternoon on the way to the nearest shopping mall to look at running shoes. I didn't end up with any because I'm finding the whole "what sort of shoes to wear depends on your gait, arch height and so on" thing a bit confusing at the moment, but the application works just fine as you can see top right. It's nice that I can finally seemingly walk at over 4 mph again, which used to cause my leg to get very sore afterwards, but feels fine right now. Stay tuned for actual running developments.

Paperwork

This is my "jobs applied for" folder on my laptop. It contains pretty much everything I've applied for since this time last year. There are now so many versions of my resume, cover letters and so forth that it's getting a bit hard to keep track of them all.

I'm not sure that I'd consider one normal interview, one ridiculous interview and one telephone interview an adequate return for more than sixty applications.....

Comebacks

I was a bit concerned that my little statistical post below had jinxed the team, given they then shipped four goals in the next two games, taking one point from six and scuppering a bid for third place. Fortunately, a win and a clean sheet on Saturday makes everything better, especially when it cements a place in the playoffs. Look at the table after the 4-1 defeat at Exeter on March 16th (right). Ten points out of the playoffs with  nine games left, twelve behind Exeter. Their collapse in form over the next seven games was something similar to our own in the last month of 2008/09. Quite something to have clinched it with a game still to go. I could almost have a lie-in on Saturday morning. So now we get our third bash at the playoffs. Oddly, all three have been with the home leg of the semi-final first. And as someone pointed out on Claret and Banter today, the last time we were in the playoffs, Gillingham won promotion from the bottom division, QPR were relegated from the top division, and we edged Chesterfield out of the last playoff spot in our division. History repeating itself in terms of being promoted at Wembley would be nice....

Oddities

Because I can't spend every waking second working on job applications, here's a bit of Tuesday afternoon trivia. In light of the Bantams' latest win this evening, there was a very interesting little statistic on twitter this morning about our record on Tuesdays, which has been extended today. Bradford City have now played twelve league games on Tuesdays this season, and haven't lost a single one of them (seven wins, five draws), but the most freakish thing about that run is that they have conceded a miserly two goals in the process.

Record (league games only) by days of the week:

Saturday: P26, W8 D6 L12, F38 A41

Monday: P1, W1 D0 L0, F3 A1

Tuesday: P12, W7 D5 L0, F14 A2

Wednesday: P2, W1 D1 L 0, F3 A2

Friday: P1, W0 D1 L0, F2 A2

(combined non-Saturday record: P16, W9 D7 L0, F22 A7)

The especially weird thing is that all five of the Tuesday draws were 0-0. On Saturdays, just two goals conceded in the eight wins, and a goal difference of -20 in Saturday defeats. Clearly, if the cup final was on a Tuesday, we'd have won. Or drawn 0-0 and won on penalties. And we should petition for the Chesterfield, Burton and Cheltenham games to be moved to midweek. Or perhaps an unexpected snowmageddon could cause re-scheduled games.

 (Including all  the cup games, the record on Tuesday is P23, W11 D9 L3, of which the three defeats were in extra-time at the FA Cup at Brentford with a second string out, a game at Crewe with a second string out in the JPT, and, last but not least, the famous 2-1 defeat at Aston Villa that sent them to Wembley)

The record on days of the week isn't the only odd thing you'll see. There was a post on Claret and Banter a while ago about the goalkeepers. I can't find it now, but I've updated the numbers. Look at the records with the two different goalies:

McLaughlin: P20, W10 D7 L3, F32 A16 (0.8 goals per game against)

Duke: P22, W7 D6 L9, F28 A32 (1.45 goals per game against)

I know from bitter Wednesday night experience that the goals against column is to some degree a function of the other players in front of you (as well as the holes in your game); the majority of Duke's appearances did come when Davies (and Meredith, to a lesser extent) was missing. But pause for thought.

Speaking of Meredith. He was a player everyone was raving about in the first half of the season. 'A steal' they said. 'He and Reid have such an understanding with each other, one overlapping the other'. I only saw him twice when home at Christmas, where he laboured, but since he was probably in the incubation period for glandular fever which caused him to miss two months of the season, that's not a surprise in hindsight.

With Meredith: P29, W15 D8 L6, F48 A32 (1.83 points per game, 83 points in 46 games. Promotion form)

Without: P13, W2 D5 L6, F12 A16 (0.85 points per game, 38 points in 46 games. Emphatic relegation form)

Fifteen of the team's seventeen wins have come with him in the side. In those fifteen wins, the side has conceded just six goals, and never more than one goal in a game. He appears to have given Kyel Reid a new lease of life since his return. Not surprising in a way, since the two most frequent stand-ins, McHugh and Good were converted centre-backs, unused to being in advanced positions. Take-home message: keep fit, JMc and JM!