What the Feb?

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

OK so I'm a long way from being half marathon ready. In fact, I'm not really ready for any effing thing ... but I do have a race goal once again, although I'm still not sure if I'll have the date free from w*rk in order to participate. It's the local 10km Lindfield Fun Run which I've run twice before (maybe three times?) and whilst only 10km it's a brute with two awful, awful hill climbs in it which you complete twice. It seems weird moaning about hills in a little 10km fun run when I've completed four of the P2P monsters now, but really you don't expect brutish, nasty hills in a little fun run, so somehow they always seem perversely horrendous.

Anyway, w*rk permitting, that's my next running goal, about five weeks away.

Consequently I was out on the roads again this morning at 4 a.m. ... I still have to pause for reflection each time I write those words, but if I'm perfectly honest, in recent years it has become my favourite time of day to run, especially at this time of year (summer down here of course) when it's relatively cool. I also like the streets to be free of traffic and other pedestrians. Cool, dark and quiet is just the way I like it, so the burden of getting up in the middle of the night to go for a plod is not so great. It's also the only way I can get to run and still be at work on time at 6 a.m.

Despite my declarations of intent, my return to running fitness has been like a recalcitrant lawnmower, with many rips of the cord but only a few stuttering false starts to show for it. There's the occasional bursting into life, only for the motor to splutter and die before getting seriously going.

I'm hanging in there though. With a change of spark plug and some general cleansing things should start to look spic and span again soon.

Oh, and the other news is that my running diaries (covering the decade 2004 to 2013 and rather hopefully entitled Volume 1) have finally been completed and are in the hands of the publisher. It should be available through Amazon in a few weeks (maybe a few months, depending on how long it takes to correct the proofs). I sincerely hope this will be just the first of a string of RC publications. Apart from the obvious candidate (stand up EG!) there are several others in this neck of the running woods who should commit their musings from over the years into a hard copy format.

Exciting, eh?