Good morning sunshine

I read a book. I know, big surprise right there. Thank you. Anyway, its a running book, and as always (or most times) with books of that genre, it was a trifle too long, and I might actually prefer to watch the movie. But thats okay with me, I give them a lot of rope, the athletes.

The guy finally runs the mile in 3:56:34 and that is sort of the highlight/climax of the book. Other than a lot of stuff about growing facial hair and crazy white people trying to be too orthodox, and a certain point where I think the author was saying:

"Hey look! Even in the United States of AMerica we struggle to make olympic champions. Despite having invented breakfasts and so on"

which was a bit OTT for me, you know that Kenny is from a country whose sole olympic individual medal has been in a sport that no one ever heard of (and even I cannot recall, except for the fact that it seems to require laser based eye surgery; and not anabolic steroids).

So I finished the last bit of the book last night before sleeping. This morning I woke up and the first thought was 'Where am I? Who is this?' after having convinced myself that I was, per usual, hanging by a thread at the edge of our bed, and that, was in fact the looming figure of husband in his formal clothes heading out for his flight in the wee hours, I went back to sleep for a bit. About 15 mins.

At 5:45, I woke up with a start. I had, in the meantime, managed to switch off the alarm - don't know how. So I just woke up. And sat up. 'What is this pain?' I asked myself as my shoulders did what they have been doing this past month and sent searing messages of pain to my brain. 'I will show you guys' I told the blasted things and got up and got ready (somehow, all getting ready for running events in my life involve laundry. Dirty smelly clothes from before).

I ran around the neighborhood, not really with a plan. Except that I had about an hour to spend on exercise before other duties would beckon. I ran into the university campus next door (because I had been to the uppity Boat Club place yesterday anyhow). I saw the track and decided to jump in there, instead of the roads, since I did not have a plan in the head.

Again with not much thought to it, I found myself running 800m and then running up and down the steps. The direction of climb was not correct - I have to lead with whichever foot is feeling stronger, and, if I had to climb within the 800m thing, it felt weird. So the next 800m went by and I found myself down the ground doing push ups. Suddenly, I recalled the book and that wonderful mile the guy runs. Of course he is an olympian and all. And they are all just numbers. But..

I discovered that I was taking MORE TIME to run 800m than the guy took to run THAT MILE (which, in case you don't know, is 1600m).

Oh well! That is not very inspiring. But I made myself the following excuses-

I am 37/I am a frail woman/I am brown/I just plain suck, yo!/Yeah but Roger Bannister?/And even those boys over yonder/Damn I just feel plain fat/

And at the end of it all, I returned home jogging back painfully slowly (really, what does it matter any more?) and switched on youtube on my TV, and instead of choosing the one in which there are actual human beings, I found the ab routine where its some android type thing with a clever cut-away demonstrating the actual movement of the muscles. And even with the android type thing? I couldn't keep up in the last 30 seconds.

Oh well!