New Year resolutions? One of mine is to read more. I visited a bookshop in Windsor just before Christmas where I bought myself two armfuls of reading matter. These were then given to my wife so that she could solemnly hand them all back to me on Christmas morning.
It’s how middle-aged bah-humbuggers like me do things.
I forgot to buy any Mark Twain though, as intended. Apart from Tom Sawyer, read as a 10 year old, all I’ve seen of Twain is quotations, but it’s these quotations that have convinced me we should get reacquainted. I need some of that sagacity.
The latest corker of a Twainism I heard is:
"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned."
On the running front the news, as always, is mixed — which is at least better than being totally bad, as it seemed to be a few days ago.
On the negative side of the equation are two items: a deeply discouraging, stuttering plod on Tuesday evening. And the streaming head cold I somehow managed to conjure for myself yesterday.
Despite these disincentives, I forced myself out this afternoon. It was a rare opportunity to run in the daylight, albeit the half-hearted, overcast, wintry mid-afternoon version of daylight. But being able to see where I was putting my feet seemed to cheer me, and I managed nearly 4 miles without too much difficulty. I felt heavy and immobile, yes, and my pace never broke through the 11 minutes a mile barrier, but I didn’t need any breaks, and perhaps most important, I felt no ankle twinges.
My only focus at the moment is the Almeria Half, now only 24 days away. Half of me is sufficiently stupid/positive to think this is plenty of time to knock myself into shape, lose a stone and develop thighs and calfs of iron, while rediscovering a never-actually-possessed Bambi-like agility.
The other half knows it’s going to be a gruesome struggle up the Rambla, and through those long, lonesome, windblown final two miles along the seafront.
There was some talk about Sweder of this parish pacing me to a sub-2 hour half at Almeria, but it isn’t going to happen. I’ll drop in the usual aside here, that there’s a difference between being negative and being realistic, and I’m not being negative. I need to be realistic about Almeria so that I can afford to be positive about races further along the calendar.
My aims are simple: to get round the course without finishing last, and to stay alive long enough to sup a few beers with my mates and talk gobbledigook half the damn night.
And after that…? Well, let’s survive Almeria and its hangover first.
