Monthly Archives: November 2019

keep on running

I posted a couple of weeks ago about starting the None to Run program. Pleased to say I’m still at it and started Week 3 today.

Week 1 was fine but I had to do Week 2 twice as I only managed one run the first time before life intervened and knocked me off track. Restarted it last week and also felt able to add some extra time on R2 and 3 starting each of the 7 intervals 5sec early, adding on an extra 10sec and running 2min for the final interval.

I started W3 a day early today as I won’t be able to run during the week. It meant I was running for the 4th day in 7 and there are two additional intervals so I decided to stick with the plan. However, on the last interval I felt good and decided to run 2min once again 😊

This plan starts very easy and increases very slightly each week so it suits me really well. I had strong doubts I would make it this far and that I wasn’t built to run but so far so good. I haven’t been doing the strength training though which needs to change before the difficulty increases much further but I can already feel a significant change in the strength of my legs.

rosie finally learning how to pose for the camera

the retribution

The Retribution (Carol Jordan and Tony Hill #7) by Val McDermid.

From Goodreads:

There is one serial killer who has shaped and defined police profiler Tony Hill’s life. One serial killer whose evil surpasses all others. One serial killer who has the power to chill him to the bone: Jacko Vance. And now Jacko is back in Tony’s life – even more twisted and cunning than ever before.

My Rating: 🌟 🌟 🌟

This book had a lot of potential. Carol and Tony are moving their lives to a new chapter and moving closer to a proper relationship, Jacko Vance breaks out of prison and there is another sicko serial killer on the loose. Somehow, however, the author manages none of the story lines particularly well.

Everything about this book is grand but it’s far from great. The twin stories of the new killer and Jacko’s revenge spree were very underdeveloped and really should have been two separate books while the ending was shockingly sudden and verging on ridiculous with Jacko. Both stories felt like the author ran out of time, especially with the new killer. This story just finished very abruptly. Add in the complete overreaction by Carol towards Tony and the overall story left a bad taste.

The saving grace of this book is the development of the secondary characters, especially Paula and Stacey. The second story line allowed for this but I really would have preferred to see this happen in a separate book.

It’s a step in the series and worth reading but the next instalment needs to be much better to rescue the series.