When life gives you lemons...

So, having made a flying re-start into my desperately late and hugely condensed marathon training programme, I planned to do some swimming which I thought would be a good strengthy thing that I'm also good at and enjoy. Another 64 lengths (which is a mile) should kick-start this training. I took my swimming stuff into work on Deadly, as per (I can't recall if I've introduced Deadly - she's my bicycle. Deadly Peddly, or just Deadly for short, named by my Australian colleague, Big Jim).

I sat around (as you do in an office) for half the morning, and then, needing to check something, I got up. It was a mistake. It's one I usually make first thing in the morning, where getting out of bed has seemed overly-risky ever since I was hospitalised for it; I hadn't seen the risk in simply getting out of my chair. I knew straight away something was wrong with my spine, but pushed it away. I went to the filing cabinet, and almost couldn't pull a lever-arch file (I know - NO ONE has them any more!) off the shelf without yelping. I pulled it off anyway, because I was in denial, but my eyes were almost watering. I hobbled back to my desk. I decided that the obvious thing to do was some roll-downs to see how much pain I was in. I got about half way down, and realised I was quite comfortable there. Also, that I couldn't get back up. I clearly needed to lie on the floor and do pelvic tilts. I somehow got down onto the floor, an unusually difficult maneuver, but was more or less unable to do pelvic tilts when I arrived there. Several colleagues stopped to ask if I was OK. I realised the futility of it, and got back up and wedged myself into my chair. It was Thursday, which meant that I had so far achieved 9 miles of running and a bad back, and had 2 weeks and 3 days to go.

I took a deep breath. What needed to happen was for me not to have a bad back. I didn't even bother with NHS direct. My parents have had bad backs for my whole entire life, and I've had a couple of problems over the years myself. I knew the exercises, and I knew how long they take to get better. About 3 weeks. The last time it happened to me, I'd bent sideways to reach under my bicycled in order to carry it down a flight of stairs, when I realised I couldn't stand up again. This was the same. I knew, with unflinching certainty (flinching was out of the question), that although I was not in crippling pain, I could be, at any moment, if I did the wrong thing. It was like tightrope-walking above a crevasse of pure pain.

I did what I believe is the obvious thing: I went swimming. Swimming is well-known for being brilliant at backs. Only, I couldn't really walk, so I cycled there. Look, it was fine, it just made me cry when I went over bumps, but otherwise it was absolutely fine. I somehow managed to get clothes off and costume on, can't really remember that bit. I was mentally scaling down how many fewer than 64 lengths I would do. I started to swim, and people did their customary "getting out of the way of the swimmer with goggles on" because I look terrifyingly fast, only this time, I really wasn't. I had to swim in the unlaned area, because of some forthcoming lessons which hadn't started yet but may imminently do so (I hate that. I know it's not just about me, and clearing everyone out would take ages, but I hate seeing empty lanes that I could get a few laps in while they were - anyway, never mind). They had bizarrely laned off a single lane on the other side of the pool, which was marked as "private", but frankly, I had other things to think about, like not drowning, to worry about this.

Front crawl hurt a bit, and breast stroke hurt if I wasn't thinking about it. I found I needed to stop frequently and curve my back forward because it was getting quite a bit of head-lifting backwards. I enjoyed the back crawl on the first length I did, but then not so much. I alternated everything, even tried side stroke (both sides). I managed to knock out 20 lengths before I decided that I'd had enough. I couldn't afford to make it worse, after all. I felt I was pushing unknown cures to the limits, out of pure desperation. I ignored the "private lane" because I needed the steps to get out, and no one shouted at me.

In the dressing room, I was aware of 3 or 4 ladies having a good chat, and as part of it was about depression, I almost chipped in with information about a play that I thought they might like, but I didn't. They got ready at pretty much the same speed as I did (and I should have twigged that that meant it was rather slow), and as I was spinning my costume, two were brushing their hair in the area. I noticed that one was holding the arm of another, but again, didn't really catch on to what sort of carer she was.

I came down the stairs and found that I needed to take opportunity to sit down in order to text Peter who I was meeting up with, because texting from my bicycle was going to be less possible than usual. As I did so, I realised that the 4 ladies were now approaching for their after-swim coffee, and the nature of their disability became apparent. "There's a sign right in front of you, just step to your left. That's it". They were blind. They were three smiling, up-beat ladies with a seeing-eyed friend or carer, who had gone swimming. I grinned at the carer, who smiled back as she got drinks in for the girls, and they happily chatted away. I suddenly felt a bit stupid, feeling so sorry for myself over a bit of back ache. Look what these ladies were getting around! They reminded me of a germinating plan in the back of my mind. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I thought, and pulled my chair forward.

"Excuse me, ladies, I wonder if I might ask you something," I said. They smiled, curious, interested, a little bit knowingly. Maybe they thought I was going to ask them how blind people swim. I wished I'd watched. "I'm a runner," I said, "and I was thinking of running a half marathon blindfolded." Whatever they thought I was going to say, it wasn't that. They were still interested. "Are you mad?" one of them said, joking. "Funny you should say that", I told her "I get that alot". I explained that I'd been interested in raising money for a blind charity, and I wondered what they thought. I told them I'd be running with a guide, that you get a rope and hold it, and that i wondered especially from the carer, if it was difficult to give the right information. They were very interested, and gave me the names of two charities, and also the name of someone who could perhaps let me walk with a guide-dog while blindfolded, to see what it was like. They asked me for my name, so they could listen out for it. I explained that it was still conceptual, so it was likely to be next year's Peterborough Great Eastern Run that I attempted it. They seemed to like the idea though, and that was my main concern.

I know that when you're gloomy or worried about something, it doesn't necessarily help to see someone who's in a worse position than you (although I've long suspected that this must be the appeal of soap-operas), but somehow, seeing a group of people dealing with adversity in such a very positive manner was especially uplifting. I hobbled out and got back on my bicycle.

Anything's possible.

Single Ladies

Tuesday, my last full day in Edinburgh, and, obviously you will have realised that I like packing the day with activities, this was no exception. Having discovered a pool so close to home, I was moderately pleased to have another session down to use it. I headed in, paid up, and the lady said "It's just a half pool till 11, is that OK?" I said, "Yes, fine", but as I was leaving, she said "the shallow end's cordoned off". "What?" I asked. She repeated this, slowly for the English person. I couldn't really quite grasp it. They were really expecting me to swim widths? Apparently so - without even halving my entrance fee, which I think would have been fair. Fortunately it was actually five to 11 at the time, so I was able to dawdle for long enough getting ready that I had the whole pool. Something very weird was going on though. There weren't any lanes today, as there had been on Sunday, so I scanned the pool and decided that I'd cause least problems if I stuck to the middle, and let the meanderers have the edges. I guess there were about 40 people in the water, it was quite busy. As I slipped into the shallow end, I realised that I'd just dropped the average age to about 62. To be honest, I felt as if I'd inadvertently joined a set of Dr Who. Especially since they sometimes seemed to all move in the same direction, without really communicating. I did apologise to a granny for disrupting their leisurely swim, and she said, "nonsense, we just wish we could still swim like you", which was both kind and a bit creepy.

Today's task was to swim for 45 minutes, taking as few breaks as possible, and sticking with the crawl as much as possible. That' easy for Sal to say. The pensioners were not only drifting up and down the pool, they were also drifting across it - and diagonally. Every which way. I stuck with my  sets-of-five principle which had seemed to work, but in truth, it really didn't today. I came unstuck so many times, breaststroke is a far easier stroke to negotiate other swimmers in. Also, bear with me on this, I suspect it might be my rising insanity. I felt sick when I did crawl. The thing is, with crawl, I mainly looked at the swimming pool floor, with brief glances up to see which side the pensioners were attacking from. With breaststroke, on the other hand, I mainly look up, or at least forward at the pool. What I noticed about the floor of the swimming pool was it was filthy. Then I noticed that as I was in the middle, swimming directly towards a water filter, that the filter was 3/4 blocked. This is awful, and has no connection, but about that time, I started thinking about old ladies and incontinence. Then I started feeling sick. I don't know why breaststroke made me feel any better. Perhaps I was coming down with something, and the crawl was actually moving too fast for me, I don't know. But the swim, while I completed 62 lengths, was not as satisfying by any stretch as the Sunday swim. I was relieved to get out and leave, and grateful that, thought I wouldn't particularly boast about the cleanliness of Peterborough's regional pool, and I know where all the cracked and missing tiles are, and where the funny brown marks are, it has never made me feel like that.

On Tuesday, I had a treat, which was that I was having lunch with Mwara, a friend from the olden Edinburgh days, and her three girls. We met at Bruntsfield Links, and headed into Bruntsfield for lunch at Montpeliers, which was lovely, and generally pretty good value, although wine by the glass is extortionate. On the way back, we called into Nippers, where I was able to pick up a gift for the younger Loat, and also observed that the fine and upstanding "Peckhams" sells Thistlycross Cider, which is Scotland's only cider. It comes in some amazing flavours though, including with strawberries, in malt casks, and my favourite, with ginger. In fact, I happened to be having lunch with the wife of Scotland's only cider-maker. There should be a film about that: "The Last Cider Maker of Scotland". Or something. I think Peter's up for the lead.

After lunch, I just had time to stop off at the Udderbelly/Cowpasture, and drop off apricot jam (my second delivery after Mwara) with Emma, along with the cute ladybird leggings I'd got for Dory, and have a quick cup of tea with her and Mike, before heading off for The Seagull Effect. This was another up and coming theatre company, who did some impressive feats with projection during their play, which was largely about the 1987 hurricane, and climate change, and the impacts on people's lives. It was a well-put-together piece.

I had some time before my next show, and we'd realised the problem with finding Simon's friend the day before - his show, So Much Potential, was in the venue where we'd been watching comedy the day before... but in a different room. So we went to check it out. Annoyingly, they weren't doing it on Tuesdays, but kind of weirdly, they'd chosen to spend their "day off" sitting in the room, having a banter with anyone who came in, having an open mic, and drawing people. They were relaxed and friendly, and drew Summer, and didn't object to people walking in and out, which was lucky, because that's exactly what I had to do to get to my next show. We wished them well for the rest of their run, and bid them farewell.

Well, my next Show was "All the Single Ladies" with Andi Osho, which I was very excited about. I think she's a very funny lady. While I was waiting in the queue, a strange bloke came up, and asked me if I'd put my arms out, scarecrow like. You might think I was wrong to do this, but there was something I couldn't quite... "Van? Is it you?" So this was a man I'd met in my Freshers Week at University, who was at the time setting up a society called the Hugga-Bugga-Jaffa-Appreciation Society, and it largely involved hugging people (and eating jaffa cakes). Clearly the bloke is mad as a hatter, and it goes without saying that I love him. I asked someone to take a photo of us, and he immediately swept me into his arms, like this:

He was in town with his wife and three kids, but it was amazing, the people you run into. What a find!

Anyway, I'd rather accidentally got a ticket for Andi Osho, because Tom's mum Diane had bought one, but because it was a 2 for 1 day, she'd thought she'd get the spare one incase anyone wanted it, so my luck was in there. I found her in the queue, which was good, because it's fun to have someone to see comedy with. We sat kind of near the front (obviously avoiding the front row), and as we sat down, noticed that she was right there! Perched at the edge of the stage! She spoke with one or two of the brave folk in the front row. I looked at her in awed admiration, unable to think of a single thing to say. She started off the show saying she liked sitting out front for two reasons - one was that it's really boring back stage, and second because it's really funny seeing people's reactions to her sitting there, doing a sort of bunny at car headlights impression. So I guess I behaved pretty typically.

She asked who was in couples, and who wasn't, and I guess I may have been a little exuberant in my whoop when she asked for single ladies, because she was able to identify my position in the audience. She asked how long I'd been single, so I told her, since Christmas, and then she asked me if he was a dick, and I agreed, and she said "yeah, they all are". She asked me if I was ready to date again yet, and I stood up and said "Hell, yeah", which made everyone laugh, and Andi said I could go on a double date with her! That is easily the most exciting offer I have ever had! The gist of her show is that she finds single men in the audience, and then, really, picks one and goes on a date with him. There is some other audience participation in which person she picks. Tragically, there was no one in the audience who would admit to being single that night, so I lost my chance. She did address a lot of the rest of the show to me, though, as she ran through internet dating disasters - I shared her pain! It was an awesome show. I wish I could have gone on a double date with her. I did hold onto my last shreds of dignity and not shout out "Me and you, Andy, sod the men!", so that was lucky. I also didn't offer to read out my poem about internet dating (although I think it's one of my better ones, and I had it with me) because, well, you know, it wasn't actually my show.

At the end, I spoke to a couple who were in the front row, and Andi had picked up that they hadn't said they were in a couple. She asked the girl, who said, No, they were just friends; then she pointed out to the guy that his friend was very attractive, and asked if he'd thought about it, to which he nonchalantly said "Yep", which also got applause. It turned out they were both in shows themselves, one called Mad about the Boy, and the other called Dream Pill, about kids from Nigeria being trafficked. They both sounded really powerful pieces, and I'd have loved to see them.

I set off to catch up with the others for Outland, and for a change, I arrived first. It was quite a hard piece to follow, being very dreamlike, and dipping in and out of childhood and adulthood, and dreamland and reality. I think it drew on the life of Charles Dodgeson, or Lewis Carroll, although confusingly there was the odd Narnia reference thrown in as well. But largely the play was dealing with a younger man trying to break it to his older, and respected friend, that he had a disease and needed to face up to it; needless to say, he dealt with it by running away to Outland and hunting the Snark. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be semi-biographical or not, but it was a stunning piece. After Charles collapsed, and the young couple hugged each other, weeping, the play was clearly over, but as a mark of how moved the audience was, they were going to creep out respectfully without even applause, which seemed to me to be a massive accolade that the audience preferred to believe it was real, and not disturb their final grief, than clap. Needless to say, I lead the applause, which was still quiet and respectful, because I really enjoyed it, and if I hadn't have clapped, I'd have had to wait and explain to the actors why not at the end.

At the end of the evening, Summer set off to nurse her cold, and also ice a cake which she was madly proposing to carry back on the train, in time for Pint and Poetry's Fifth Birthday Extravaganza at Charters the following day. (I had already pandered to her madness by bringing a mixing bowl up with me). Ashley and I wanted to max out on our last day at the Fringe, by staying out late and seeing more stuff. We shouldn't have done. We should have quit while we were ahead, and gone back and had a glass of wine with Summer. We instead, went to see "Stand up, Fall down", and boy, he did. Not literally, although he did have cerebral palsy, but he really didn't have a funny line, nor enough stage presence to carry off his show such as it was. Mind you, it's quite reassuring to have it confirmed to you that stand-up is actually really hard. The cabaret show after that was entertaining, but only in a "this is free" way. I suspect we'd both have preferred some sleep.

What a city! What a Festival! I love it.

Crawl

Sunday's instructions were quite clear. It was either have a rest, or go for a swim. Now I know what you're thinking. You think I plumbed for the rest, don't you? You know nothing about the grit and determination that makes me tick. I did a search on my iPhone, and despite it giving me some duff gen the day before, it came up trumps with the swimming pool - there was one right around the corner from our flat, the Dalry swimming pool. Summer assured me that she had especially chosen the flat with me in mind. I set off, hoping it was a reasonable size - some of the old swimming pools are 20 yards, which irritates me - I always feel that you kick off at one side, and hit your head on the other side, and don't really get any proper exercise done. I was in luck, though, it was a 25 yard pool, which I estimated to be somewhere around 22.5 metres, not too bad. It was a glass-roofed building, which I also rather like, there's something nice about seeing the sunshine and the clouds. (Mainly clouds). One thing that surprised me was a dispenser that appeared to be full of blue plastic bags. I wondered if they were for wet costumes, but ignored them, as I've got through swimming for long enough without taking plastic bags. When I got to the changing area, there was an old lady with a full length duvet-coat, white trainers and blue bags over her shoes. I initially assumed she was out on day-release from a local asylum, before clocking that everyone had plastic bags over their shoes. It seemed rather wasteful to me, and I'm glad I didn't deign to put any on. I'm also not ruling out that the lady WAS on day release, she was still hanging round the lockers looking lost when I finished my swim an hour later.

I'm not very good at maths, or counting, as I think we've established, and I'm also not very good at swimming crawl, which was mainly today's task. But I liked the idea of swimming sets of five, because counting each set means that the odds are at one end and the evens at the other; and furthermore found that if I do a length of breaststroke halfway through, it really kept me on target with the counting. I was fine right up till my 11th set, where I was swimming breaststroke and was so tired, I didn't realise it wasn't crawl (honestly). So I thought I'd finished the set, but I hadn't. Anyway, I kind of made up for it, by getting to set 14 and doing two extra lengths for "cool down". I'm never entirely sure whether this does cool me down, because frankly, by the time I've swam 70 lengths, I'm going pretty slowly anyway, but I do my cooldown breaststroke, which is always a bit slower. I have to say, I was kind of impressed with myself. That's more front crawl than I have ever swam in my life.

Needless to say, the rest of the day got rapidly better. We saw a performance of Macbeth, starring Ashlea's friend Costa as Macduff. It was a brilliant performance all round, with an amazingly small cast, and parts shared out among them, although it was rather speeded up, to get the entire play into one hour and twenty minutes. There was a simple but effective set of weird bronze-like blocks of different heights, and a full moon projected onto a mirror, which had a range of different things appearing on it, including a dead raven in various states of bloodiness. By the end of the play, the blocks had cracks of red lit up as Macbeth became entrenched in his bloody battle for power. Macduff's speech when he found out that Macbeth had killed his wife and children brought a tear to my eye. Magnificent stuff, and I can't wait for it to come to Peterborough Key Theatre this autumn, when it will be full-length.

Later, our paths separated as Summer left us to see Monsters in the Hall, which she greatly enjoyed, and Ashlea and I went to the Bang Bang Circus, who had an amazing selection of wonders for us, including jugglers, bendy ladies, and hula hoop artists, and rather impressively, a man who balanced a full-size shopping trolly, and a bicycle (although not at the same time), on his chin. The whole show was seamlessly held together by Charlie Chaplin, whose silent-mime compering was amazing. It was rather let down by the venue, which made it hard to see some of the acts, but all in all, most enjoyable.

Next up, the main reason I was there - was to see Emma's new baby Dorrie! Well, also, The Magnets, who performed their usual astounding performance of a slick show with amazing singing and a fair bit of eye-candy to boot. I had a new victim, in the form of Ashlea, who enjoyed the show enormously, and excitingly, not one, but two repeat offenders, Summer and Daniel (he of the bicycle), who both seemed to enjoy their Magnets fix as well.  I remain, as an adoring fan, utterly in awe of all six of them. I had a chance to catch up with the boys after the show, as they were buying their flyer-ers a drink, as a gesture of good will. A very smart move on their part, I thought, and also one well-deserved, speaking personally as someone who has tried the task.

As a last ditch attempt to stay out after 10 pm, we went over to Niddry Street and watched some Free Fringe comedy that was called Dave Hoy's Stag Night. Apparently the Stag had been told by his fiancee that he could either do a show at Edinburgh, OR have a stag night, but not both. So his choice was to do a show about having a Stag night. It was quite entertaining, although truthfully, more so once we realised the acts were literally acting being drunk. They did it a bit too well... watching people who are behaving like tits isn't actually that funny, unless you are too. So we had to heckle. The Stag himself was heckled by someone who told him he was a "Poor Man's Milton Jones". He wasn't. He did rely heavily on some rather tired puns, but he had nothing like the comic timing and genius that is Milton Jones, and nor, sorry to say, the character and charm. But it was fun all the same.

Newton's third law

OK, so some swimming today. I don't remember exactly how much, because I had an update with Sal about the whole health thing by Instant Messenger today, in which she said swimming should be OK, and she'd work out the rest of the week depending on leg progress. I have a feeling she said 4 lengths warm-up, then 10 sets of 5. And that would make sense because, with lightning acuity, I can tell you that is 54 lengths, which is a 2 length increase on last time. Maybe this exercise is improving my mental arithmetic? Or maybe we've just got onto my ten times table. But I was faced with a difficult choice just before lunch... Heather IM'd me to ask if I was busy or whether I could come to lunch with her and Nic. Well, when I say, "difficult choice," it didn't take me too long to make it, in all honesty. I quickly figured out that I would have time for a swim between work and going out for dinner with my Team at 7:30.

I set out from the office at 6, but remembered that I had two house guests staying tonight, and had no breakfast, so I nipped off to Tesco first, and got to the pool by twenty past. Now, the pool was laid out the wrong way round. Peterborough Regional Pool has a 25m lengths normal pool, and off to one side, forming a sort of L, is the diving pool. In the evenings, they make swimming lanes by cordoning off the deep end across to the diving pool, to make 25m the wrong way, which leaves the shallow end free for kids and non-swimmers. Technically, it's not a bad idea, although it did end up causing me problems.

Now tonight, the public got two lanes, and there were another 3 lanes for some youth swimming club. So, I had some challenges... the first was, whether I could count in sets of 5. I got my warm-up done, and started to focus. The answer, by the way, is no, I couldn't, although I do doubt, in all seriousness, whether I could have kept count of anything, the number of things that ended up distracting me. I lost count in the second set. The lane was getting quite busy, so I switched, which through me off. I decided, in my effort to swim crawl more, that I should try breathing on each side. After all, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and this is never more true than with exercise, when you should try to balance what you do on one side of your body by also doing it on the other side (which is probably Pilates' third law). I'm a big fan of breathing on my right-hand side, you see. Which means I breathe every fourth arm movement. This is not how to do crawl, but I am much less likely to take a mouthful of water this way. And when I say "take" I mean "inhale as if it were my last breath" (which to be honest, it often feels like). You cannot credit the number of times I've breathed to my left side before my face is out of the water. I have no idea why. Anyway, when I focus on breathing it works quite well, and I actually also get less tired. I realised this is because I often forget to do my legs when I'm focusing on breathing. There are only so many things I can action my brain to do, you know.

And then the crawl is going great, but I keep realising that I'm hitting the lane-cordons and occasionally other swimmers. The lanes aren't super-wide, so I'm trying to keep one cordon close to my side, but I'm all over the place. It took me three or four lengths to figure out why I was finding this so hard. The lines painted on the bottom of the pool were going the wrong way. I didn't have any visual steer below me. I was relying entirely on peripheral vision (on the occasion when I was breathing the right way) and physical contact, without bashing myself too much.

Third, there was an amazing feeling, reaching half way, and it kind of freaked me out if the timing was perfect, where I'd be ploughing along nicely, arm out, breath, face back in water and Oh My God, the bottom of the pool isn't there. It was really rather dramatic. The diving pool is 3.8m deep. I'll be honest, I didn't capture it very well with my photograph, because the one closer to edge just didn't look like the fall away that I felt. It's just as well I don't get giddy. So that was throwing me a bit, but more in an excited way.

What was throwing me in a bad way was focusing really strongly on my crawl and then realising that I was about to hit the person in front of me. The lanes were busy, and everyone was swimming at a different speed. Something that frustrates me even more than people who can't swim (I get an overwhelming desire to teach them) is people who swim strongly but very badly. I swam a couple of lengths of breast stroke behind this guy, and I was taking one stroke for every three he made. He wasn't going that slowly, although slower than my normal pace, which made me feel superior and efficient (I mean, more superior than usual). So the lack of directional travel, the inability to breath under water, the different speeds of people and the depth of the pool, I really lost count.

I got over it though. I have to say that taking a 30 second break every 5 lengths really helped with the counting. And weirdly, so did the block of 5 instead of 4, once I worked out that if I started on an odd number I had to be at one end of the pool, and if even, the other. I became so overawed with my brilliant swimming style, as compared with everyone else in the water, that nothing else mattered (including, as I got tired, my inability to do much else but flail). I really do love swimming. I'm very happy that it gets to be part of my training (being a sort of antithesis of Nigel, who hated it) because I'm getting stronger at it again, which is awesome.

Anyway, rushed home (having gotten told off for taking pictures in the water without signing a form first - I did it on the way out), and rushed out again to the team meal, where I sat opposite a lady called Vicky (she saw me arrive on my bike as well), and once we'd clarified that I wasn't swimming a half-marathon, open water or otherwise, she said "Oh, so you should definitely do a triathlon then!"

Do Sal's spies get everywhere?

Baker's dozen

"Warm up with an easy four lengths then 12 x 100m (4 lengths) at a pace which is not easy but is sustainable. Rest for 30-60 secs between each. Take a drink"

It's funny that my instructions should have said "Take a drink" because only the other week I saw someone with a bottle of water at the edge of the pool and thought how ridiculous it looks to bring water to the swimming baths - it just seems very ironic - what with it being full of water and all. Then I got half way through the swim, and felt completely parched, which seemed even more ironic. This is a sort of "extreme irony" that they make into a sport, because I not only forgot this entirely, but I managed to fail to read that part of the instructions yesterday so I didn't have a drink with me today. I think I was so pleased that Sal kept the instructions to something simple enough for me to remember, that I stopped reading after "sustainable". Actually, I might have stopped after "not easy" to be honest.

Nige says he isn't coming for a run with me tomorrow, he just wants to do a short one (so Ian's in luck). That was Nigel's fault for putting these ideas into my head - I said I hadn't got a special Natural Runners shirt yet (and now I've got the shoes, I feel like I've earned the shirt) and he said, "Ask Chris, he'll give you one. A shirt, that is." Oo-er.  In other news, I have asked Nige if he'd be willing to have his photograph taken for the blog, and he's agreed, excitingly. I think I'd better get Sal in here too, if she's willing to pose, as my mother said, very interesting but it was a shame she didn't really know anyone. Perhaps you'd all like to come round to tea?

Talking of tea, Heather rumbled me at tea today. She said "we only read it to see what you say about us". I hadn't realised I was so transparent. I only see how many people I can mention so I can tag them on facebook... although I read some "tips about blogging" yesterday, though, and it said "don't become a slave to the stats". So I have to not get a kick that 45 people read it. Oh, apparently it's 51 now!

So, here's another thing I learned today (from Babs. Stop it, I did). I'd been impressed at the cool-dude-ness of my Natural Running companions Dave and Nige, who looked like natural runners in their sporty red shirts last Tuesday (the day that nearly killed me - I'm kind of pleased I might be on my own tomorrow) - I remember commenting that probably what I did wrong was not wear red. Anyway, as Nige was kitted out in red tonight, I asked him what speedy activity he was off to do (cycling home), and Babs commented that red is used to ward off the evil eye (you'll find it under Latin America). I don't even need to finish this one, do I? - Apparently this is what the other runners use to avoid Sal...

So basically, the whole "Name and Shame" thing has worked rather well for the swimming - I mean, Sal clearly learned, after an entire page of description about how poorly I could follow instructions, not to do it again. Well, at least one of us learned something. She stuck with what I'm good at. And to be fair, I think it worked quite well. I'm not aware of ever having swum 48 lengths without losing count. Well, I mean 52, obviously.

Did you see how she tricked me again?