Where am I?
Hard to say.
I’m not where I was, and I’m not where I thought I would be now. But wherever I am, I’ve been here before, and I know that I’ll survive and flourish.
The foot is better. It’s past the acute discomfort, throbbing stage and back into the mere ache phase. In terms of comparative pain, it’s no longer a ‘broken bone’ and back to being merely ‘badly bruised’. I have two full days left till the Crawley race, and at the moment I have no idea whether I’ll be able to take part, or in what shape I’ll be.
My fear this week is that people will think I might’ve invented this complaint to get out of the race. Believe me, this isn’t so. Previously, I’ve had no qualms in announcing that I couldn’t be bothered to do a race, and I would admit the same thing again were it so. I’m only glad that I had already pretty much conceded this one to the great Seafront Plodder. It might have looked dodgy if I’d been full of bluster before being struck by this sudden arthritic ailment.
Instead of fretting over the timetable, I’ve decided to make this week official downtime. More than that, I’m enjoying my second glass of wine in 35 days. It’s a Wyndham’s Bin 555 Shiraz. 2005. Normally a reliable but pretty modest supermarket wine at the lower end of the price range. But right now, after such a gap, it’s drinking like a Chateau Lafite 1961: silky, rich, liquoricey and deeply unctuous: thoroughly lovely.
Yeah.
Running? Ha!