The heel is healing, but still annoyingly sore — sore enough not to risk running over the weekend, but not quite bad enough, mercifully, to prevent me wandering up the road to the Chinese takeaway and the off-licence last night.
Plans for the coming months continue to simmer. The Reading and Silverstone Halfs on March 5 and 19 seem compulsory. Or did do, until 5 minutes ago. Is it laziness and inertia, and a failure of imagination that make me think of them as non-negotiable fixtures? Or have I created a good ‘tradition’ to adhere to? Hard to say.
The Silverstone race falls on the same day as the Bath Half – a race I hadn’t considered until just now, when I discovered that the organiser has offered me a free place in the hope that it will stop me moaning about my experience of 2004. Some of me wants to say “Pah! Bribery!” But let’s face it, bribery is one of those things that are bad only when other people do it. It might be the only way of finally killing off the lingering memory of the worst race organisation I’ve experienced. In fact the race itself was OK; it was all the frustration surrounding it – the inability to communicate with anyone connected with the event – that left a deeper impression on me. It reflects one of the underlying truths of customer service – that bad impressions are more powerful and more enduring than good ones.
If I revisit the race it would mean not running Silverstone, and more important, not running the buses from London to Silverstone that I’ve organised the last couple of years. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. It’s rewarding, but stressful. Something to think about.
Heard on the radio the other day: The definition of an intellectual. Someone who, left alone in a room with a tea cosy, is able to resist the temptation to put it on his head.
