Fat people are about to be made illegal, apparently.
Or surcharged. Instead of VAT, we’ll have FAT. The fuller figure will be squeezed till the hips squeak.
Passports will be redundant, and instead, immigration officials will be issued with body-fat calipers.
I have to put a brave face on this one. Maybe it’s the fillip I need to go that extra mile. To shed, finally, those last few remaining… 30 pounds.
With every race comes a weight target. Silverstone is 204 lbs; Bath, the week after, 200. For the Copenhagen marathon in mid-May, my final target weight of 182. That’s where I was when I stopped smoking in 1996.
None of these targets are ever reached of course, but such is the nature of the game.
It hasn’t been a great week for it. On Sunday evening, on my urgent walk to the pub, I managed to stub my toe with such ferocity that only a gallon of strong ale could console me.
Monday and Tuesday, the toe was black and purple, and throbbed like… like an armed throbber. Yesterday it started to ease off, and this morning I chanced a run.
Spring has returned. This morning at seven, the world was bright and mild and welcoming, and running was a treat. Almost.
Those 6 pints of Guinness last night, and the midnight chilliburger and large fries, and the 5 hours of fitful sleep, didn’t add up to great preparation. I could feel the residue of this Bohemian cocktail inching up my gullet as I jogged the 3½ miles. It never quite made it.
The energy pay-off was distributed through the day: more energy and enthusiasm today than the rest of the week put-together. The more I run, the more I see that, at my end of the athletic spectrum, running isn’t actually that much about running at all. Running is just the externalised manifestation of something else. The real thing.
And what is this real thing? Ask me again in a while. Every time I run I get a bit nearer to it.
Perhaps the secret is that you never quite get to it.
