A Weekend of Surprises

Well that was an interesting weekend, full of surprises and slightly surreal experiences, but certainly one I’ll remember – for a number of reasons.

On Friday I headed into Tokyo since I had a meeting with a potential designer. As I dressed in the morning I was debating whether or not to wear a suit. One wants to impress at meetings, but then I really didn’t want to drag a suit around with me all weekend, and certainly not to a half marathon.

Then it hit me. I’m the client. These folks are trying to win business from me. I could turn up in my Bananaman outfit and they’d still be the ones trying to impress. I’ve never been the client before. My entire career I have been the one trying to sell a product – but this time I'll be on the other side of it. Rather nice it felt too. Sadly Eric, along with all my other fancy dress, went to the skip before I left London, so trousers and jumper would have to suffice. How very dull.

Meetings where everyone dressed like this would be infinitely better

Meeting done and I managed to get lost on no fewer than three separate occasions before successfully meeting up with Darrell to eat a considerable amount of meat while supping on several fine craft beers and chasing them down with a couple of bourbons as the evening wore on. All good prep for a race on Sunday.

Saturday was to be a quiet day, but it got off to an incredibly odd start. My morning routine involves me checking my emails as soon as I wake up, because of the time difference it means that the majority of emails I receive come in overnight and it’s always nice to start the day with word from home.

Now, I’ve had a bit of a Facebook embargo recently, more on that later, but I saw an email from the site and then a whole load of responses from people. It turns out that Cricinfo, the biggest Cricket website in the world, had an article on the homepage asking “What’s the best job in Cricket?” Which then went on to describe yours truly as a: “Sushi-eatingCricket Missionary”.

Back on Cricinfo - but not writing about myself this time

It was a very odd way to start the day, reading an article on a website you visit daily that you might just have the best job in the sport you love. While I’m not entirely sure that I agree 100% with the sentiment, it is rather humbling and the next time I have a shitty day at the office and start complaining to myself I may just re-read the article and then give myself a solid slap round the face.

The rest of Saturday involved steak for lunch (protein you see, all good for muscle recovery) and a trip to the cinema, before an early start on Sunday for the Odaiba Half Marathon.

Odaiba is small island of reclaimed land which is a bit of a tourist attraction. At present it hosts things like Cirque du Soleil, Oktoberfest and in 2020 it will be the staging post for much of the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Having done a long running post recently I won’t bore you with all the details, but the course was exceptionally dull – up and down the bay four times, which meant running passed the Statue of Liberty no less than eight times. I felt for the people who were running a full marathon on exactly the same course.

Knackered, but pleased at the end

I did the run in 1:44:51, meaning I broke the magic 1hr 45min target I’d set myself two years ago. Considering I have not run all week and genuinely couldn’t walk six days earlier because doing 15 miles had left my right knee creaking worse than the bike shelter outside my building after the snow, I was doubly pleased and now feel that I might  have a chance of hitting the target I’ve set myself in London – provided the knee does not copy the bike shelter and collapse. Days like this are a huge confidence boost, and make you realise that the training is actually doing it's job, and thus worth sticking with.

Dear knee - do not behave like this shelter.

That’s all for now. I’m steering clear of Facebook because, well, essentially seeing what everyone else was up to was making me homesick. That and the fact that I felt it had reached a tipping point where I found more stuff on there to be irritating than amusing or informative. As such I am only visiting to post links to this blog, while the occasional photo via Instagram will go up there too. I will of course, respond to any messages that come via the site, but would rather people just emailed me instead!

As ever – Mahanimashte.