Marathon preparations: toilet training

Today, something a bit scatalogical: the PRP, or Pre-Race Poo. If you don't want to read a load of shit, you can skip this.

The Stench of Guts

Flying does terrible things to your body, but then so does staying up past midnight drinking, so I was quite accepting of the stomach cramps and restive bowels that I experienced as we landed at Narita. It's a stupidly long flight from Singapore to Tokyo; about 5,500 kilometres, where I sat and my body turned to something like cheese.

Down the toilet

Running has done a lot for me; it's taken me to the Gold Coast of Australia in the wintertime, it's made some of my toenails turn black and fall off, and it's given me a wardrobe that's almost exclusively sweat-wicking polyester with reflective logos. But terrible as those things might be, they are nothing compared to the abject fear of toilets that running has instilled in me.

Musical Toilets

They keep playing inappropriate music in the toilets at the office. A few days ago I was hunkered down in the thunderbox when I realised my activities were being soundtracked by A-ha's theme to The Living Daylights. Today I found myself being serenaded by Robert Palmer. There are many things a toilet may be, but if it's simply irresistible then I think you're probably leaving it a bit late before you go.

Toilets

Apparently Cathay Pacific are still having toilet trouble: by the time we were approaching Heathrow, at least two of the toilets were out of order. Were they blocked by foreign objects? Isn't every object foreign when you're in international airspace?

Musical toilets

This evening I met a friend for drinks at the Westin in Bellevue.  He's down for the day to talk technology with some people nearby, so as I've just travelled several thousand miles, it seemed to make sense to catch up.  However, as I'd been out for the evening already, I was in need of a swift visit to the euphemism to unload my sorrows.

Toilet terror

Today I was chased across the room by the toilet. When I told my workmates about this, they suggested that I lay off the LSD on Mondays, which I thought was a little bit unkind.

Toilets

Last night, knackered, I went to bed at 10.30. And because my hotel has a yodelling karaoke joint below my room, I didn't sleep until 2am, what with bellowing women, hamfisted guitarists and a man who arrived in the middle of the night just to rev the engine on his Ferrari. Didn't he know the Formula One race was at the weekend? Worst of all for my paranoia was that every time I went downstairs to complain about the noise, the whole street went silent. Until I'd gone back up to my room, and exchanged bamboozlement for rage when the music and yelling started up again.

Fortunately, I had an early morning teleconference and meetings from 11am through until 4 this afternoon, which gave me PLENTY OF TIME FOR REST AND RECUPERATION. STOP IT YOU BASTARDS I would yell between violent mood swings. It's unfair of Singapore to have this reputation for being the Switzerland of Asia, and then not actually being organised and rational. Which leads me onto the toilets.

Toilet Triumph

For a week, we had to put up with there being no supply of flushing water for the toilet. One week turned into two, and the sign in the building lobby about a broken pipe disappeared, but the water did not reappear.

Of being battered, and of toilets, and the Future

Today was my first day of training in Tadotsu, and indeed the first exercise I've had since last Wednesday, if you exclude walking to the supermarket and purchasing Pringles. For no apparent reason, I couldn't sleep until two this morning, which meant the day was a bit of a struggle, as it started with a couple of hours of being thrown around by Japanese students in the morning, and then being walloped by a chap from Australia, before an afternoon session of wearing sweaty body armour in an overheated room and getting punched and kicked again. By about 4pm I was ready to drop; by half past five, having sat through a lecture delivered in untranslated Japanese I was ready for bed.

Toilet encounter

I went to the toilet this afternoon. Not such an exciting thing to remark upon, but in one of the cubicles there was a man on the phone, shouting rather loudly. To begin with I thought he was shouting at me, but it's unlike the men of Hong Kong to be so territorial about toilet spaces.

Chernobyl - not the usual daytrip

Yesterday, I found myself reading about Chernobyl. I hadn't realised that it was now a tourism destination.