Accelerating

I'm getting faster - unfortunately, I have to go to Seattle to do that. Today we got up at 7 (the first time since I've got to this side of the world that I've been woken up by my alarm, rather than woken up alarmed and confused at some other hour of the morning) and went for a 9 mile run. I choked down a gel after about 6 miles, and then without even trying, ran the last 2 kilometres at under 4:30 each. That's ridiculous. That's like going for a gentle jog and then finding that you're hammering out a speed more appropriate to running a 5k race, and without even feeling like you're trying.

Which is nice, but I assume when I return to Singapore, my heart will once again labour with the onerous task of maintaining homeostasis, and since the blood will be going to cool my body rather than feed my muscles, my pace will drop again.

It does appear that there's no negative consequences to a big drop in temperature. Thus my marathon in Osaka in November should be easier than what I'm doing at the moment - although how that impacts on my speed is something of an unknown. Maybe I'll just find it very easy to get round, when what I want is to be going just slightly slower than the pace that would completely wreck me. A few months left to find out...

After our run, we went to a bakery and purchased an enormous bag of bagels. There are ridiculous bagels in Washington. There are bacon covered bagels. (Isn't that just a little insensitive to the bagel's Jewish origins?) There are pizza covered bagels. There is the 'everything' bagel which doesn't have pizza or bacon on it, which seems inconsistent behaviour by the baker. I shouldn't criticise too much; the orange and cranberry bagel is a worthwhile innovation, and the rosemary bagel is delicately flavoured - different enough to plain to add interest, not ridiculous in its remit. But there's the Snickerdoodle. I don't know why you'd go out of your way to make a bagel that tastes like a Snickers bar, but since Americans are crazed individuals who think the entire world should taste like peanut butter, it shouldn't come as a surprise. It's the work of a pervert though, the kind of person who thinks a nominally healthy thing like a bagel should be crammed with sugar and flavouring and quite possibly dipped in icing (sorry, frosting, never let it be said that I don't respect the culture of the country I'm in).

And then they make French toast bagels. Honestly. Are they worried that they're not fat enough yet?

I survived breakfast, and I managed to pack my suitcase successfully, only forgetting my suit jacket and failing to remove a great big tub of hairgel from my carry-on, but we dodged both of those bullets and then drove to the airport, where I leaped out and legged it into the building, running away back to Singapore. If I'm very lucky, I won't have legs shaped like sausages when I disembark in twenty hours time.