Well done to my old uni mate Gav, with whom I ran the Scotland Run 10K whilst in New York back in April, for completing the New York marathon last Sunday in a superb time of 4hrs 5 mins.
The wonders of modern technology meant I was able to follow his progress around the route and get updates on his lap times - whilst slumped on the sofa in a hungover fug after the Lambeth fireworks display in Brockwell Park the previous night.
It almost - almost - got me back out running again. Work somewhat got in the way this week, which is becoming par for the course; the dark side of technological advances being that I can now connect to my work desktop from the comfort of my own home. Things are hectic and stressful in the office at the moment, and on numerous occasions I've found myself sitting in my spare room at 11pm staring wearily at the screen after putting another 3 hours stint in when I should have been relaxing or spending quality time with my girlfriend (not that the two are mutually exclusive, obviously). Where there used to be a distinct line between work and play, now there is none. I no longer view my home computer as a portal to fun and knowledge; rather it reminds me that I could - and probably should - do some work over the weekend.
Hence I'm determined to spend the afternoon and evening browsing and messing about for leisure today - J is off to look at her friend's holiday snaps and I, alas, am not invited. I haven't blogged properly for months due to the aforementioned work and the Steppe by Steppe blog has died a death before we even got to the start line! It's next on my list to update, before senility takes hold and the internet morphs into some sort of giant thought-based cloud where this type of content no longer exists.
Blogging does feel a bit passé these days, with Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr etc all competing for our social updates. None of these, however, provide the level of detail I sometimes want to go into and none of them will allow me to look back in years to come and think "oh yeah! I'd forgotten about that!". This particular slice of web-logging has been on the go since '06, since I was in my twenties, since I was single. Whilst all of that seems not that long ago, the 942 posts that precede this one have captured a huge amount of life, significant events & adventure for posterity. At least it seems that way to me.
Anyway - back to the running. I'm going to creak back out on to the pavements of SW2 tomorrow (assuming no inadvertent drunkenness this evening) in the same pair of trainers I've had since the blog began. I think that 5 years and a few hundred miles of running has finally destroyed them; whilst they still look reasonably good, I get blistered feet every time I attempt to jog more than a couple of kilometres in them. That shouldn't be a problem tomorrow - it's four full months since my Personal Best was smashed in the British 10K, during which time I've pulled on the ex-spangly Nikes a grand total of once. A cheeky wee lap of the park tomorrow may be all I can hope for.
Pay day is next Friday, and I'm determined to finally bite the bullet and get gait analysis and a proper pair of running shoes. Of course, true to form, I've procrastinated so long that I have now moved office to Hammersmith, and after having a branch of Runners Need round the corner from work for 2 years, I now have no idea where the nearest one is. Wait and see - guarantee I end up just fishing a pair of Reeboks out of the bargain bin in JJB Sports instead and then wondering why my knee keeps popping out every time I try to go up hill.
