Joe Theobald, aka DJ Captain Wormhole, Looks at all things vinyl 

GOSH darn it, I sure do hate waking up on the Tuesday morning after a nice long bank holiday weekend. That extra 24 hours of freedom and beer really accentuates the drudgery of the 9-5.

I actually think a missile over the head courtesy of Pyongyang would take the edge off, get the pulse racing and give you a chance to procrastinate a little longer before the emails start flowing.

Maybe it’s not just the weekend’s excesses that have got me down — maybe it’s nerves.

In just a few days I’ll be joining approximately 2,609 other runners at the Country Ground for the start of Swindon’s relaunched and revamped half marathon.

I’ll be plodding along for 13.1 miles, hopefully in two hours or less, through the streets of the town that raised me. And I in turn I will be raising money for a good cause - all the bunce is going to the Prospect Hospice so they can continue to provide top quality care for people who are dying and their families and loved ones.

It’s not really the done thing to listen to music on a big race day so I’m intending to get a song jammed in my head to help eat up the miles.

As a pacing technique I’ve calculated, based on a 45 inch stride length (averaged over three tests using some little stones and Heather’s measuring tape), with 830,610 inches in a half marathon, and aiming for nine-minute miles, that I’ll need a song at 117-118 beats per minute on lock in my swede. This is too fast for most good Hip-hop and too slow for most Techno. According to Google a Cha-cha or a Finnish Tango could work.

Since I don’t do Finnish Tango I’ll be playing with the tempo switch on my Technics and a metronome during the next couple of days to find something appropriate.

If you’re feeling generous I would be super happy if you sponsored my run on https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Joseph-Theobald