Saved by my N95

Last night’s running commute was swapped in favour of free alcohol at an internet industry networking thing in keeping with [an anonymous friend’s] year of only drinking free alcohol and on our way to the geekfest we kept being offered free alcohol by owners of various Brick Lane curry emporiums and we thought that’s fate, we will go and get free alcohol then come and eat curry and drink more free alcohol although I seem to be drunk by 8pm and in the morning I can barely remember the restaurant and remember even less how I got home although I think it involved a bus and being in Chingford and some teenage girls and it’s 7:47am and I’m wondering why my alarm isn’t going off and I remember it’s Saturday and I think yay and I go back to sleep and I don’t wake up until 10:30 and I have a huge hangover and a stomach ache and I think can I wimp out of today’s run and I think no I can’t as I will be pissed off if I do so I get up and think that was a bad idea and I get back into bed but I immediately get up again and think how the fuck am I going to run 11 miles, I’m not even sure I can make it as far as the kettle but I do make it as far as the kettle and I make a cup of tea and drink lots of water and an hour or so later I’m feeling vaguely humanlike and I get my Garmin and my iPod and I think I haven’t charged my iPod for about a week, I hope it doesn’t die on me and I get to the marshes and there’s a group of people with WFHC on their tops and I wonder what the HC stands for and I have to stop at the bridge at the marina as there’s a cyclist in front of me wheeling his bike up the bridge and I get to the tennis courts and there’s a man at the fence waving me over and I go over and he asks me to throw his ball back that’s come over the fence and I find the ball and I look at the fence and I think oh shit that fence is a bit high, what if I can’t throw it that high, I’m going to look like an idiot but I manage to throw it over the fence and I continue on my run and hope no more obstacles like walking cyclists or wayward tennis balls are going to hold me up and I get round the marshes without any more obstacles and the singer from the Wombats is telling me for the third time that he’s moving to New York as he has issues with his sleep and I’m wondering why this song keeps coming up all the time and at 6.8 miles a boring Killers’ track comes on and I go to skip it and my iPod goes quiet and I think oh I must have pressed the off button by mistake so I press the on button which is the same button as the off button but nothing’s happening.  OH MY GOD MY IPOD HAS DIED ON ME AND I’VE GOT 4.2 MILES LEFT TO DO.  Fuck.  And I’m wondering if I can do another 4.2 miles without my iPod and I think well I’ll have to, I’m three miles from home anyway, might as well do the whole distance.  Bollocks.  And then something bleeps and I think maybe it’s my iPod coming back to life but I realise it’s my phone and I think am I allowed to stop and check my phone and I think probably not and I think I can check it when I get to the bridge but then I remember that I’m not going up the bridge, I’m going to continue into Tottenham Marshes to make the distance up and then it occurs to me that I have songs on my N95.  Yay, saved.  And I put my headphones into my phone and make sure the music’s coming through the headphones and not the speakers like I did last time and I go up to the bridge where the race started last year which was the last race I did and had to limp round the last half of it due to my leg falling off then not being able to walk for two months and then I head back towards home and I’ve got two miles left and I get to the park and I’ve got half a mile left so I do a lap of the park and then I go home and somehow I’ve managed to drag my hangover round 11 miles without stopping.  Sort of.

Today’s route

Stats
Distance: 11.11 miles
Time: 2:05:44
Pace: 11.18 m/m
Calories: 955
Walking cyclists: 1
Wayward tennis balls: 1
iPods dying at 6.8 miles: 1
N95s saving me: 1
Music
The Wombats
Cardiacs
The Killers
Peter, Bjorn and John