Fraudulent running

I've run every day so far this year, and all the way back into early December, without a break. However, recently I've maintained this unbroken series at the expense of proper exercise. Rather than getting out and doing a proper, solid 10k, I'll manage a kilometre (or at most, when feeling ambitious) a mile, before returning to home, smelling perhaps more of defeat than exhaustion.

This is partly because I'm nursing a sore heel from Sunday's over exertion, partly because the poor quantity and quality of sleep I've suffered this week has left me sluggish, and because I've either been thinking too hard, or not enough, and lack the willpower and mental strength to push myself to run a proper distance.

And thus, instead, a kilometre here, a kilometre there, not really enough to persuade my body that it's still alive and not on the road to cheese-flavoured obsolescence, my cholesterol-enhanced cadaver sleepwalking from home to office and back again.

To make matters worse, there's just as much dirty running kit in the house as if I'd run a marathon every day; sweaty socks make no consideration for whether they were used to run a mile or twenty six miles. Although I did a Stakhanovite amount of laundry last weekend, I've lacked the mental ability to put it away, and now hunting for clean socks becomes a confused and frustrating occupation.

If somebody would come up with a ten day week, perhaps I'd have time to get all of this done. Until then, it's just these pretend, plastic runs to take the place of doing things properly. At least this is a recovery week - but that means next week will be even tougher...

Some problems to solve

A wise man told me that you should meditate for half an hour every day, and if you can't spare the time to do that, you should just meditate for an hour every day.

Close to breaking point

I'm struggling. I'm not sleeping properly, I'm going to bed too late, I'm leaving the office too late at night, and my beard is suddenly itching so much it's a massive effort not to tear at it with my bare hands.

Toasted

I've been struggling. After the competition my brain was all worn out; I should have noticed on my run this morning when I couldn't think hard enough to make myself run quickly. I should have noticed when I spent the day incompetently clicking on icons on my computer, unable to do anything productive. I should have noticed when I didn't notice it was Tuesday today.

Bad Start

This morning we found a dying gecko on our kitchen floor. It lay on a tile, only quivering one of its legs when we touched it, otherwise immobile. There was no obvious wound that it had suffered, although its head was much darker than its body, as if it had massive bruising.

Basically...

Today I felt sluggish, after the hyperactive rush of the first two days of the New Year, when you're full of plans and optimism and hope. Plans and optimism and hope that keep your brain fizzing so you don't sleep for half the night, and plans and optimism and hope that then dissolve to nowt in the dark fug of sleeplessness. Basically, my New Year's Resolutions are a bit like an enormous Alka-Seltzer.

Tired legs

I got up at six this morning, eschewing common luxuries like more than six hours sleep or eating breakfast. Struggling to push my brain awake, I put on some of my unattractive running clothes and went downstairs, out to the park.

Of cats, and the cold

Another uphill day today - it's not good for a man of my age to go for a drink on a Tuesday. Even if that drink is really in the singular, and last night I was mixing beer and wine. Or wine with beer. Now, which one makes you feel fine, and which way round doesn't?

Relax

I read the last 200 pages of The Corner tonight. That was as cheery as one might expect. Unfortunately, I'd also been listening to the weepiest Rachael Yamagata songs I possess, so by 9.30 this evening I was utterly broken.


Eating all the food in the house had done nothing to lift my spirits, whether it was blue potato crisps or bitter chocolate coated ginger sweets. I wondered if I should engage in substance abuse to take my mind off The Corner. I doubt David Simon and Ed Burns were proselytising for the joys of heroin in their phonebook sized tome though.

Oh, the horrors

What a horrendous day. I burned my mouth eating a hot wrap too quickly, I spent three hours in a meeting that I didn't understand a word of, I interviewed somebody for a job and almost blew my stack when I asked what I thought was a simple mathematical problem and got told to look it up on wikipedia. And my suit is covered on one side with a strange yellow stain.