Socks and early wake up calls


I was woken this morning at 6:30 by La Serpiente, demanding that I go and lie on the floor in her room. Bless her, she did at least insist on dragging a pillow in to make it more comfortable for me to lie on. I had to explain to her (with lots of shouting and crying) that we wouldn’t be lying down to sleep, because it was time to get up and get ready for the school bus.

Somehow we stuffed her full of nutrition, got her dressed and got her down to the entrance to our building in time for her to be bundled into the minibus and sent on her way. My wife went off to a playdate with our youngest, and I went back to our flat to get on a series of calls, and wonder what I could do to be more industrious. I ended up tidying up the bed in the spare room, which has been partially obscured beneath books, half-read copies of the London Review of Books, USB cables, discarded sarongs and such, making it more and more difficult to sleep on every night. I even took a pair of compression socks that are too tight for me to wear, and put them up for sale on Facebook. I’m not sure if there is a market for second hand socks. If not, there’s a clothing recucling event every two weeks in our building, where they pay handsomely. Well, where they pay 30 cents for every kilogram of discarded clothing.

I tidied and spent most of the rest of the afternoon on calls, and then when the evening came, provoked a massive fit of crying from La Serpiente when she had her bath, and I didn’t let her snatch all the toys from her sister. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued. The good thing about her screaming at the top of her voice for fifteen minutes is that when we actually get her into bed and read her a story, she’s too exhausted to faff around any further, and so she went straight to sleep and I could go out for my evening run.

It was a fairly tough run tonight (I’m still getting over last night at the track, I think) with plenty of hills, but this was the second fastest I’ve ever run it, so all this slogging up and down the road is starting to make a significant improvement. In a week and a half I have my target 5k to run, and I’m hoping to break 20 minutes. Or sulk a lot. I also discovered (I’m not sure how) the Run Until You Drop challenge, where (in February) every day you try to run the number of miles equal to the date. So on the 1st you run a mile, on the 2nd you run 2, and so on, until you are attempting a faintly idiotic 28 miles on the last day (or 29 this year). This is one of those things that flies directly in the face of all we know about periodisation and sensible training. But there’s a nice t-shirt if you complete it. Only 8 months to train for it…


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