Is there a dog? I’m not a dogmatic type, so I say no….
[pause]
How did I get into this cul-de-sac? And how do I get out?
Regarding the first question, I was about to say “Thank god for Excel”,
but I hesitated. As a shrink-wrapped atheist, I hate mentioning the
word. Not because I find it distasteful, but because I worry that
people might suspect that I’m a closet theist.
In answer to the second, I say this: Bugger ’em, let’s start again.
So. Thank god for Excel. How easy it becomes to answer another
question, one I was pondering during this evening’s run: How long will
it have been between next Sunday’s Almeria Half, and my previous half
marathon?
A glance at my spreadsheet says 322 days. Just 6 weeks or so shy of a
year.
Halfs can be pretty frightening things. It’s not anxiety about failing
to finish, and I won’t be wearing those PB stress shoes this weekend –
the ones with the concrete soles. It doesn’t matter what my time is for
this race. It’s the distance itself; it just isn’t a comfortable one.
As I said recently, if you run regularly, and throw in occasional
weekend 10 milers, then you can turn up on a whim for a half and get
round — unlike a marathon, which sees a third of your year turn to
dust.
But a half is still a robust workout. It’s long enough to think, half a
mile into the race, “Oh bugger, what the hell have I gone and done?”
It’s long enough to get depressed about your athletic fragility, and
long enough to curse your burgeoning adiposity, and long enough to
resolve that next time you find yourself in one of these irksome
events, you’ll be two stone lighter and will have developed thighs of
tempered steel. You’ll have found the perfect shoes — the ones that
make you feel the way you do when you’re hurrying along one of those
moving walkways at the airport. Every time I’m on one of those things,
I shut my eyes for a moment, and think: “Wow, so this is what Paula
Radcliffe must feel like”.
I was probably going through all those must-dos at Silverstone last
March. 322 days later, I suspect I’ll be going through that
well-thumbed task-list yet again.
A bracing 5 miles or so this evening with the local club. The streets
were black and empty and cold. Very cold. It was the coldest night in
London for 9 years, I heard later, and the statistic might well extend
the 50 or so miles westwards to Reading. Cold enough to debut those
rather effete white gloves that advertise last year’s Eintracht
Marathon, a freebie from the Hamburg Expo. The trouble with gloves is
that your instincts tell you to use them as a handkerchief. Which is
perfectly OK in my cavalier running universe, except that (in running
company) a handkerchief is sometimes used for blowing a nose, and at
other times, for wiping the sweat and steam from a pair of glasses.
As I discovered this evening, these functions are not truly
complementary when carried out in quick succession.
