Dear Sally

Er. Right.

You know how it was nice and sunny earlier? And now it's raining? How about an early night as a quid pro quo?

I'm flummoxed as to how I come to be so totally knackered, but I am. On the plus side, I did have a shorter, unscheduled run with weight training earlier today, but it was only about 15 minutes. And I wasn't wearing my trainers. I learned some valuable lessons though. Want to hear them? Course you do.

Well, I was on my way back from a meeting in London, and made an brief diversion on the way home to Blacks (which is having a massive sale) and scooped a bag which I thought would be appropriate for a weekend Glamping next weekend (my second hen party of the year: mum couldn't believe it - she says she thanks her lucky stars that she was born in 1938 and avoided all this). I made my way, with new purchase (in which I placed my work bag and computer, because the new bag has wheels) to Victoria underground station, which despite having massive posters up everywhere claiming huge improvements to the service, still opts to get around the problem of overcrowding at rush hour by making you walk approximately twice your actual journey distance, in underground tunnels. To be fair, it was reasonably effective. But I got to a train, eventually. Then it stopped at Warren Street, where the polite driver informed us that owing to an incident at Kings Cross that the police were sorting out, we'd have a few moments' delay. He then let us know that he had permission to go on to Euston, but there would be a further wait there. My train was at 16:40, and is the only fast, slow train (regular commuters will understand this oxymoron). It was 16:22. I jumped off the train, swung my new purchase onto my back (ah-ha, it has wheels AND rucksack straps), and set off up the Euston Road.

Now, here are some interesting points. It's less than a mile between Euston and Kings Cross (although that isn't allowing for platform length), and I didn't even hesitate about running it. I knew I could run that distance - and I knew I could do it in less than 14 minutes. I'll tell you something else (while I'm here, and all): I also know I couldn't do it previously - I've had to do it at a fast walk on previous such occasions. Furthermore, pace training may even have its place in this saga - it's not easy running along rush-hour pavements between two major train stations. There are lots of people. Some of them seem to hesitate before going, oh, she'll figure it out - and stepping directly into your path. The art of slowing down, negotiating, and then speeding up, is pretty handy, in fact. A thought I'd never appreciated before. You know how maths teachers always used to say "you'll use this in later life", and while I was in the position of needing to do some trigonometry the other day (no, really. It was to do with those trees and the plot markers) I swear I couldn't remember anything more than SOHCAHTOA. And even though I can remember what those letters mean, I still can't remember what they're for. The point being that my training has already had practical application, while my brain failed on the only practical application for trig in 20 years. (I strongly suspect that Keith could have done the calculation, but he refused to accept my point that it would be of any value).

Anyway, I made the train. Unfortunately, so did Roger, so I had to listen to an entire train journey about a rock festival him and his teenage son were on their way home from. His son had the good grace to pretend to be asleep, which is the only thing you can do when your extremely embarrassing father meets an extremely embarrassing friend on the train. Also, I discovered why runners don't tend to wear short skirts. As Rog put it, first class may get a free cup of tea, but they don't get a free cabaret show.