April in Paris

It's not my fault! Really it's not. It's all the fault of Greg our youngest son. He's just done the Berlin Marathon and, knowing that I've had this desire to do a Marathon - but only a distant desire, nothing too close to reality, the merest hint of a wish really - he sent me a link to the Paris Marathon site. April in Paris - too many links. Jane and I honeymooned in Paris in April. I studied there at 17 and loved the city of light. How could I not do it. AND it's just 2 days before our 36th anniversary, AND I get to do my first marathon before I'm 60 next June. All the same, I was still thinking about it when Jane logged onto the site and got me registered. So perhaps it's her fault too. It's certainly nothing to do with me - except I'm the one who has to run it!

We have a small mail order business selling second hand books so for the last few weeks - ever since I forked out the 50+ euros for entry to the Paris - I've been hacking up to the village with a pack on my back full of orders to be posted. Good training. I'm not - thankfully, since there are less than 6 months to go before April 5th - a complete novice runner. I do orienteer a bit. But I've got out the way of running continuously for any length of time. So today - 31st October - I ran about 9+ kilometres in 55 minutes non-stop. I'm rather pleased with that and the run ended at a friends' house where we slaughtered 3 pigs, half of one of which is for us. A good day! The run didn't feel bad. I'm a bit tired but OK. And I avoided all the rain that's been beating down in very heavy showers.

By the way, I live in Brittany, deepest rural Brittany, where the idea of slaughtering a few pigs on a Friday afternoon, is not at all 'de trop' as they might say over here!

Now all I've got to do is convince various bits of my anatomy that they really would like to run about 4 or 5 times what they've just done - and all in one go! And then Paris will be a doddle.