May . . . the farce be with you . . .

[Sweder]

Well, it's a start.
Err, another start, I suppose. An energetic prelude to nine and a half hours with a triple seven strapped to my ample haunches I set off on a repeat of last weeks' bayou-side sweat-fest.

In a curious case of life imitating televisual art I suffered an alarm clock malfunction. The night before I'd wallowed in my cheap and none-too-clean motel bed watching a Seinfeld marathon. Seinfeld is one of those slick, well-written American sit-coms you either love or loathe; on this occasion it was easy eye-candy for the weary traveller, and most welcome. The episode in question concerned an African visitor named John-Paul. JP was to run in the New York Marathon and was set to stay with Elaine (friend of Jerry - that's Jerry Seinfeld . . . oh, if you haven't seen the show you'll have hit 'back' on your browser by now anyway) the night before. The 'running' gag was that JP had missed the Marathon in the Barcelona Olympics due to a problem with an alarm clock, and Jerry became paranoid that Elaine’s poor sense of time would lead to disaster. Hilarious farcical events conspired; Kramer, an industrial strength hot-tub pump . . . you had to be there.

Anyway, so I woke up on Monday morning having set the bedside alarm for seven (I wanted to avoid the heat and humidity that arrive in this city after nine am). The alarm clock displayed 6:45 but the harsh sunlight pushing through the edges of the curtains told a different story. Sure enough some sort of power outage in the night had reset the clock. That or I’m an incompetent berk who can’t set a simple alarm clock . . . whatever; it was 8:55. Bugger.

Another slog-sweat ensued, retracing the heavy steps of my previous expedition along the Bayou to Hermann Park. This time despite the rapidly rising temperature I felt a good deal better. I actually ran for rather a long time (around forty minutes or so) before taking my first walk/ shade break. The sun, grinning madly as it scurried towards its zenith, eager to burn my portly shadow into the Houston cityscape, did its worst; yet on I plodded, resolute, in no small measure buoyed by my (slightly) improved performance.

I managed a full circuit of the municipal golf course in the Park before heading for home. I reckon this added up to somewhere close to six and a half miles (though it’s very hard to tell - I'm calculating distance on pace and time only) and I chugged up to the apartment steps in a shade under an hour.

All in all I can’t wait to get back to my muddy hills.
Recovery of form will be slow and painful. And all the more fun for that.