Anything Is Possible

I try to get out of bed this morning to go for an early morning run. If I’m going to get that 10k time back below 42 minutes I’m going to have to train a bit. Perhaps not this morning though as I hear the rain lashing against the window, again. I snuggle back into bed with L and by the time I get finally up the only viable option to get to work is by car, and of course hope that no one’s parked up in the middle of the A52 today.

My meeting, cancelled from Monday, finally happens but I have to cancel a pub lunch for it, so not terribly enamoured to be there. It goes ok though.

Then it’s squash, which I lose 4-1. Although there were several pluses. First the game that I won was 15-1 (yes we play to 15, which is none standard but don’t ask), and was nearly the first 15-0 whitewash for either of us. It would have been well funny if I’d achieved that. The second plus was that we carried on playing after the match to aid my opponent’s 10k training. We played two more games and I won both. My superior fitness winning through.

Not that I ever expect him to actually do a 10k of course but he did drunkenly agreed to one last week, so I’m revelling in the possibility at the moment. I guess anything is possible.

Anyhow I’m calling the score 4-3 and if we’d kept playing I’d have won overall eventually. After that I had to practically carry him to the pub.

I get home just before L, who’s just back from the cinema and a brick session (that’s my training plan) at the gym. So we’re both in need of sustenance and because Daughter had staked out the living room for some TV programme we have to take the bottle into the bedroom. Not a problem.

(Thursday 11th November)

Always A Pleasure

L asks if I would take the dogs out this morning. I think L is too crippled by her back injury to do it herself but obviously she wouldn’t admit it.

It’s always a pleasure to walk the boys. Although MD left the house with his nose in the air, constantly looking left and right, and with a ‘let me have em’ attitude written large across his face. Perhaps this is what L is on about when she complains that he’s a pain in the mornings. I sit him down on the pavement outside our house and ask him just what he thinks he’s doing. He’s still not listening and I have to tap him on the nose to get his attention. Meanwhile Doggo rolls his eyes and looks bored; shuffles to the end of his lead and lifts his leg up the nearest gatepost.

Once I have calmed MD and had words about his attitude problem, we continue and the walk then goes ok. We nearly have a ‘situation’ with the usual little black terrier but its owner, rather bizarrely, although perhaps thoughtfully, hid behind a parked car.

I drive to work today, in order to have a pub lunch and therefore I’m well rested and well nourished for squash in the evening. Though I no longer have huge ambitions for our weekly joust on the squash court, if I ever did. I started the year with the simple aspiration to win a game a week but even that hasn’t happened yet. Today, because I haven’t run or cycled, I feel in good shape and I duly get my game.

This does not go down well with my opponent. As tuck away the winning point, his shoulders slump and his jaw hits the floor with a thud. I suppose my lap of honour didn’t help his mood much and he looks about as suicidal as a teenager who’s just been forcibly unplugged from Facebook. He looks so crestfallen I’m not sure whether to get ready to mop up his tears or duck when he hurls his racket at the wall.

That was supposed to be the last game of the match but he talks me into another one, as he doesn’t wish to finish on a low point. Worried that he might go home and put his head in the gas oven I agree. After all I have nothing to lose, having already achieved my aim for the evening. I promptly storm into a commanding lead in that game as well. I hate to think how bad his mood in the pub would be afterwards, had I managed to maintain my advantage... unfortunately I don’t manage it but it’s still a successful night.