Patriotic pavement pounding and a new motivational tactic involving dead celebrities

A good night’s sleep. Up before 7:30. An empty house. Music on loud. This is my perfect Saturday morning and the perfect conditions to motivate me to go out for a run. That and my new trainers that New Balance sent to me and the rest of the bloggersphere.

These patriotic shoes are the New Balance 890v2 that have been given the red, white and blue treatment in honour of being their Shoe of the Month, commemorating the Olympics in London.

I don’t usually run in shoes unless they’re ones that I’ve gone to a shop and tried on and bought myself but I put these on last night, and if I’d tried these on in a shop then yes, I’d probably have bought them as they just felt right. They look good, too.

Me and my new shoes went off for our run and as Hal Higdon had me down for six miles, I went to do my route that takes me up to the lake and back down again. It wasn’t long before I started walking and I kept telling myself that if Bupa were good enough to give me a place in the Great South Run, the least I could do is to put some effort in and not walk it, as how embarrassing would it be for me to get back to them after the race and say ‘um, I walked it and came last. Soz’? very fucking embarrassing, that’s how embarrassing it would be.

So, I tried to put a bit more effort into it and I ran round the lake and overtook a man and on the way back round the lake the man was in front of me and I thought how did he get there? and I thought OHHHHH, HE TOOK A SHORTCUT AND CHEATED, YOU DIRTY ROTTER, then I remembered that I wasn’t in a race with him and forgave him for cheating and then I was walking again and he overtook me and he went the same way I was going round by the houses that back onto the lake and I thought, hmm, he doesn’t look like someone who has a house that looks onto the lake and then I wondered what sort of person does look like that and I decided it was the type of person like the old lady with the little dog who I had passed earlier on and I was right, ha!, and the man didn’t live in a house on the lake and I overtook him and I wanted to walk again but didn’t want him to keep seeing me walk in case I bump into him in the future and he says ‘aren’t you the girl who kept walking when she was running round the lake?’ and that would be more embarrassing than being asked at the beer festival last Sunday ‘aren’t you the girl that was in town a few weeks ago taking pictures of people called Steve?’

And so I finished running round the lake and headed back for the final three miles and I tried to find some uplifting music to give me a boost and Polyphonic Spree came on and yay! there is nothing more uplifting than Polyphonic Spree and so I looked to see what other Polyphonic Spree I had on my iPod and I only had two songs and I thought well, that’s not going to get me very far is it? and the next song that came on was a Police song and I thought is it all about Ps today or what and then I thought about Bob Holness and remembered he was dead and then I remembered Terry Nutkins was dead and so I thought aha! to pass the time, I will think of celebrities who have died this year but I could only think of Jimmy Savile and so I thought to myself I will run until I’ve thought of another one but nothing came except some actor I had never heard of until people were RIPing him on Twitter the other day and then I thought what about Eric Morecambe? Did he die recently? and I couldn’t remember and then I thought aha, Max Bygraves and then I really couldn’t remember any more and thinking up dead famous people made me remember the song by A House

And then I thought, ooh, they could update it and do a new one with dead celebrities who come under the light entertainment category, then I thought, maybe they’ve already thought of that and are just waiting for Brucie to pop off to the Palladium in the sky and then I carry on walking and running and I’m not sure if my motivational tactic of not stopping until you can’t think of any more dead celebrities is going to catch on.