These scales just can’t be right. After an entire day of fasting I find I weigh two pounds more than I did this time yesterday morning. How can this be? I’d already cheated and revised my target GNR weight upwards by a whopping ten pounds. I now find that I have to lose nearly two pounds a day between now and Sunday to achieve even that doctored target. Not ideal news in this pre-GNR week, but I’ll have to live with it. At least the surplus ballast will give me extra momentum once I’ve managed to launch myself in the direction of South Shields.
No run yesterday. The backs of my legs were still smarting from the heroic effort of the night before, and I’ve become ultra-sensitive to twinges in this area after the problems of this year. Calf muscles are a sore point, one might say. Ho ho ho.
It’s not often you receive a cheque from an international marathon guru but this was my experience yesterday. I received my smart new, bright yellow, Hal Higdon “V-Team” baseball cap. Also in the envelope was a cheque for £3.94 made payable to Hal Higdon, but endorsed on the back as payable to me. What’s this all about? The mystery deepened further when I read the attached letter which was from a folk music shop in Edinburgh. Eh? It was a VAT refund on some items bought there in 1999, and the efficient Scots were only now getting round to refunding his VAT. So? And there was a note from Hal to me saying that he had decided to award this cheque to the first UK cap-buyer. Hmm.
I suspect that US banking laws are different from our own, as of course I can’t pay a cheque (or “check” as they will insist on mis-spelling the word) into my own account. Needless to say, there is a sharp letter of complaint on the way to Mr Higdon.
Not really. I decided that anyone who invests in the British folk music industry can’t be all bad. I wonder what he bought? I know for a fact that he is on speaking terms with his neighbours, so it can’t have been an anthology of bagpipe music.
Which reminds me of my favourite Gary Larsen “Far Side” cartoon (which I know I’ve mentioned before, but it was a long time ago). It depicts the gates of Heaven and Hell. At the entrance to Heaven, a saintly fellow is shown playing a harp, while outside the entrance of Hell is a devilish figure playing an accordion.
Good old Hal. He found himself in hot water recently on his own website forum [server down at the time of writing]. He’s quite a movie buff, and posted a message recently to mark the death of Leni Riefenstahl, and to note that she’d made one of the most remarkable films ever about athletics (Olympia, the documentary about the 1936 Berlin Olympics). He was instantly submerged beneath a wave of accusations of being a Nazi sympathiser which he gallantly fought off, but it was a bloody battle while it lasted.
Ever noticed that those who denounce bigotry appear to be among the least tolerant of people…?
