You know how sometimes you pop into Marks and Spencer to top up your Y-front collection, and come out with a suit and half a dozen shirts (and no Y-fronts…)? Same happened today on the running front. Went out for three miles and came back with seven. Encouraging.
I’m serious this time. Yes OK, I was serious last time, and the time before that. But I’m properly serious now. The weather’s breaking, spring is close. Races start glowing on the calendar.
There’s no April marathon to taunt me — first time in four years. Thoughts are turning autumnwards, but I’ll leave a decision for a while. Runners find it easier to enter races than to get to the start line. I’m no different, though my failures are more public than most.
So I’ll shut up. But shutting up is hard to do, as someone almost sang. I’ve had some interesting thoughts about future challenges, but I’ll wait awhile before bean-spilling, just in case.
A by-product of my refreshed ambition is the gym induction session I’ve booked for next week. I don’t have many good excuses for not putting the effort in this time: it’s in the basement of the building I work in.
Tip for British readers: The clocks go forward this weekend, so think about a run very late on Saturday night. As long as you’re back after 1 a.m., when the clocks change, you can add an hour to this week’s running time. Should get you out of that annoying long run on Sunday morning.
It was back to the canal today. First time in a while. Midweek, midday, with the towpath to myself, beats the weekend congestion. Saw hardly anyone. A smiling guy, double-dogged. Then a pensive, solitary youth in school uniform. What was his story, I wondered? But I knew. Same as mine, I should think. Couple of canoeists slid past. That was about it.
Listened to a couple more episodes of Phedippidations, the podcast of Bostonian Steve Walker. It’s a nice idea, well executed. I have a feeling he’s one of us.
