Running essentials

Today we bought a new Garmin 210 to replace the old one that had died. The difference is amazing, in lots of little, slightly worrying ways. The buttons have a proper clicking feeling when you press them; the beep as it moves through menus is much louder, and I'm left with the sinking feeling that Garmin haven't improved their design since I bought a 210 last year. What has happened is that my brand new 2011 Garmin has rotted in the sweat I've produced over the last year, and come this time in 2013, my new Garmin will be just as cruddy and sick as my old one was.

Still, at least the strap hasn't exploded and flung the unit into the darkness, like last night.

One of the lucky ones: Garmin and superstitions

It's bad luck to be superstitious, but I'm a Sagittarean, so I've read that doesn't affect me. Still, if like Edison you can make yourself luckier by working harder, perhaps the luckier you get, the more you can take it easy.

I always wear the same t-shirt when I take a flight with my wife. I always wore the same trousers when I did stand up comedy in Hong Kong. If I have to make a speech I always write it on my hand and then never look at it. I have to have a particular pair of shorts when I do my early morning Sunday run.

If I don't do these things, the world has a habit of screwing with my plans. It's not that I think they're capable of altering my fate, but the absence of them makes it easier for mistakes to happen. If I have a different pair of shorts, I might not remember to take my keys with me because I won't remember to check they're in that particular pocket. If I don't write things down, I'll forget them. If I'm trying to decide which pair of trousers I'm going to wear, I'm devoting scant mental resource to something that isn't essential to making people laugh.

Well, I've had people laugh at my clothes, but those chuckles are few, far between and undeserved.

These habits-cum-totems of good fortune have an important role to play. They allow you to concentrate on what's important. If you know you're wearing your lucky socks, you can stop worrying about laundry and think about how you're going to impress people. If you've tied your shoelaces and undone them and tied them again you know they're not going to come undone. Just like Obama's famous lack of variety in suits: by removing the need to make a decision about something trivial, you can concentrate on deciding important things.

Garmin GPS

There's a design flaw with the Garmin 210 Forerunner: something in the mountains around Chiang Mai find them delicious, so every other time you take your GPS out there, it gets gobbled up by the trail fairies. These are the same pests that nick your sunglasses, let your tyres down, and break your rear derailleurs, and the government really should do something about them.