The Covid-isolation 1 mile garden invitational

Today I was joined by Dottie for the first running of the Ramsden Garden 1-mile invitational, conceived yesterday and implemented today. The event took place in ‘ar-garden’ in north Buckinghamshire, England.

The terrain is mixed – mainly grassy, but also very leafy this time of year and participants have rated ‘slippage’ as one of the key hazards to watch out for. Apples are also a potential bug-bear, here’s Andy, when asked for his initial impressions:

“There’s thousands of bastard apples, hidden under leaves ‘an all, it’s not reyt!”
Andy Ramsden, participant #1 talking about course conditions

Unfortunately due to Covid restrictions, other humans were banned from entry on account of having too low a viral load – no negativity at the inaugural Covid-isolation 1 mile garden invitational thank you very much, and so Andy and Dottie claimed their respective number 1 and number 2 participant badges and got stuck right in to matters.

Dottie unfortunately rather sullied events by taking her No.2 event number a little too literally and proceeded to take a dump in the middle of the course, making matters rather tricky for all involved.

Here’s Dottie looking rather shame faced post-partum:

Controversy never seems far away when Dottie is around and so it came as no surprise to anyone to see Dottie try and SABOTAGE her opponent at the half-mile stage! Here she can be seen clearly untying the laces of participant 1, Andy.

The rest of the event passed uneventfully and the 1-mile challenge was completed in less than 33 minutes, a new course record by a Covid viral load carrying human.

297 calories were burned by the hoo-man and heart rates were elevated to a peak of 132bpm.

Dottie, still clearly bristling from poo-gate, refused to comment if she would participate again next time but she did make it very clear that she would ‘crap where she wants, when she wants, as is my right as a Black Lab’.

This matter has been brought to the attention of the Black Labs Matter Sherington committee and is currently under review.