Born to run, live to play Xbox

Last night we stayed up late watching GI Joe: Rise Of Cobra, which is something any right minded person should never do. I'd seen it before, so that makes me wrong minded to the power of two. Shame on me. I woke at six to the sound of rain, put the alarm on snooze for ten minutes ... and then went back to sleep until 9.

By then, the rain had stopped and it was far too hot to contemplate running, so I had a very sluggish day (it took us three hours to make it as far as a cup of coffee and a croissant). After a cool few days, it was grotesquely bright and hot today: the right weather for skulking in shopping malls and avoiding the outside world. This far from pay day I'm skint, so we spent the bare minimum on salad and disappointing hummus.

I went over to investigate gym membership (mindbendingly expensive, and they want to charge an application fee, which was enough for me to say no no no) and then back to the sofa, where I read the excellent Born To Run.

There are some points where it gets too evangelistic about barefoot running/demonises Nike too much, but it's a gripping read, not least for the parts where they mention scientists analysing the gait of different animals. It starts off with lizards on treadmills, graduates to a cheetah with a thermometer up its butt on a treadmill, and by the time a researcher is coaxing a pig onto a treadmill, I felt they'd crossed the dividing line between expanding the breadth of knowledge and an outtake from Jack Ass The Movie.

By then it was raining again, so regardless of the inspirational powers of the book, I couldn't go back out. But I had to fit in some miles, so I couldn't back out.

To delay the inevitable, I played Dance Central on the Xbox first. I have to say, as warm-ups for a run go, dancing like a fool to amuse a computer is not one of the greatest. I thought it might take me through past the cessation of the rain, but that was a forlorn hope.

I put on some shoes (barefoot style, in homage to the book) and did a hard four miles. In the rain, metal drain covers are your enemy, although one surprise was that while wet shoes on wet paving stones are fine, wet soles on dry paving is very, very slippery. I made it back in less than half an hour without landing on my ass in front of anyone, and then we had to wait for me to stop sweating before rushing out to a Russian bar for lots of beer.

Sorry, "carb-loading" - how could I forget so quickly?