Last Friday I was sitting at the end of the main platform at Reading station, waiting for my train to appear. Being rush hour, it was hardly Adlestrop, but the overwhelming Fridacity of the occasion was compensation enough. After gazing at my crossword for a while, I casually looked up, noticing with alarm that my once-an-hour train was waiting at the far end of the platform. A guard stood alongside, flag raised. Without thinking, I jumped up and belted down the platform. I just made it.
It was only while I was sitting down, panting like a steam train, that I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be injured. Ooo-err. What had I just done to my calf?
Well, interestingly… not very much. I stretched and prodded it a bit, but there was no reaction at all. It’s feeling OK.
That was 2 or 3 days ago. I resisted the temptation to run over the weekend, just in case. But tomorrow? Tomorrow, I plan to give it a go.
A few people have mailed me to ask what’s happening with the Dublin Marathon. The unsatisfying answer is that I don’t yet know. All I can do is get on my feet again, build up some fitness, knock off some fatness, and try to get to the Bristol Half in 5 weeks time, then the GNR a couple of weeks after that. If I manage to slip past those ugly fellows, well, who knows? If Dublin doesn’t happen, there’s always the possibility of something later on in the year.
Wandering listlessly round Berkshire’s premier shopping street on Saturday, I picked up a copy of Marathon News. This is pornography for the runner. No publication is more likely to set the heart pounding than this one. It appears, like the clematis, and the red admirals that are everywhere at the moment, from July to October, and lures the unwary.
It also lures the wary. Like me. I think I’ll enter the ballot, and hope to god I don’t get a place.
Talking of pornography (well, I mentioned it a couple of paragraphs ago) I’ve just remembered a sign that I saw outside the Ann Summers shop on Saturday.
July 31st, it informed me, is National Orgasm Day.
Come again?
