Pre race nerves

The trouble with a race that starts just after midnight is that you don't have much to do beforehand, apart from try to not do anything.

I don't think I managed that.

Things started off ok when I got out of bed late, but then we went to the Christian pancake shack for breakfast. This time round there wasn't a lecture about Christian photography, or photographing Christians, or a communal sing-song that caused the circuit breaker to trip and the coffee machine to stop working. However, there also wasn't a waitress in the joint who understood when I asked for "fried eggs" I didn't mean "scrambled eggs", and when I asked for "a cappucinno" I didn't mean "wander off for half an hour and forget about it". I'd have thrown the first stone, but I was too weak from hunger and sleepy from caffeine deprivation.

After breakfast, we went over to Orchard Road, where I lost some time in a bookshop looking at books I wasn't going to buy, then went to another mall where I bought socks (this was as thrilling as it sounds) before a third mall to buy unguents for my wife to rub in her face. Somehow it was now four o'clock, so we trundled home and I went to sleep.

When I woke up, my wife made me a big bowl of pasta. And then I thought about going back to sleep again, but instead I languidly bumped around the apartment, rewatched Buffalo Soldiers, wasted some time on the Xbox and then ate some more pasta. At this rate, doing the half marathon will make me put weight on, not lose it.