#juneathon – Day 6 – The Day I Failed

Yep, that’s right. Failed. Totally and utterly.

It’s a boring story, but that’s never stopped me before.

I’m in hotels this week. I started this morning in Walsall and would end it in Preston.

I was just going to do the mile minimum run today when I reached Preston about 6pm. When I arrived at the hotel the streets looked just awful. Howling police cars, busy roads and I just couldn’t face another run by such awfulness. So I thought I’d use the hotel Gym on the 7th floor and just run on the treadmill.

Todays hotel carpet is somewhat migraine inducing.

I headed up to floor 7 to find a notice on the door telling me I had to go to reception for a key and complete a medical questionnaire. “Well sod that” I thought and headed off down the stairs to go for a quick whip round those awful streets. I went all the way down to the ground, but couldn’t get out apart from an emergency door, which was doubtless alarmed and would bring hordes of hotel staff tutting down on me, evacuate the hotel and call the fire brigade. So I walked back up another 2 floors and got in the lift back down to the ground again. I don’t know why it works that way, it must have made sense to some warped human being once.

I tried to find quieter roads than the screaming central dual carriageway to run on and headed off into what I now suspect to actually be central Preston. There was a very atttractive covered market bit, the Guildhall, and lots of people in tracksuits who weren’t using them for exercise and stared at me like I was some kind of new and interesting species as I ran.

I was pretty bloody fed up, and really not enjoying it. I had no idea where I was or where I was going, so when I suddenly rounded a corner and saw my hotel right in front of me again after .75 of a mile I wondered what, exactly, keeping going for another 2.5 minutes would prove and decided to just go back up stairs, drink beer and sulk.

So that’s what I did.

Note the grinding to a halt bit at the end where I dithered deciding whether to randomly run around the block again.

So today I did .82 of a pathetic mile, and no other significant exercise other than a half mile walk to the pub (ooh and another half mile back) I have failed in my Juneathon goal.

Its only a mini fail. I didnt just stay home and watch TV, I put my shoes on and went out, even if I did fall a bit short, so I shan’t be using it as an excuse to slack off the rest of the month, oh no.

This is my super grumpy, rubbish, almost run face.