Jogging Along
Page 29
Chapter 28
The journey back to my hotel room after the marathon was pretty hard going, although a metro full of excited runners kept my spirits quite high. The short walk from the metro stop to my lodgings seemed to have trebled in length, but eventually I found myself in the lobby and looking at the stern faced proprietor, who eyed me with suspicion.
‘You have just run the marathon?’ he asked.
‘Oui,’ I replied, determined to use what little French I had to good effect.
His demeanour changed, very slightly. He wasn’t exactly brimming with warmth, but there was a mild lowering of the hostility.
‘Congratulations,’ he said quietly.
‘Merci,’ I replied as I headed to the ridiculously tiny elevator.
Once in my room I collapsed on the bed and lay staring at the ceiling for a bit. I couldn’t believe it was real. I had actually run a marathon. Ok it wasn’t particularly fast, but I had crossed the finish line. And I wasn’t going to be thirty for another two weeks. How utterly fantastic was that? I had set myself a difficult challenge and I had succeeded. Surely anything was possible now. I thought about everything else that had changed in the last year. My best friend was a father and getting married to boot. I had been promoted, admittedly to a job that I didn’t really want, but it was a progression of sorts. A couple of days before my trip to Paris, I’d received a letter from Cardiff School of Education to let me know I had an interview to get onto a teacher training course. Ok I wasn’t actually sure that teaching was even remotely the right career choice for me, but it was a start, it was something.
All in all I felt that things were looking up, which reminded me of another area of my life which needed fixing. I looked at my phone, which was lying on the bedside table in the same position it had been since waking me up that morning and I saw that there was an envelope icon on the screen denoting a newly received text message. I picked up the phone and read the message with a smile. I replied quickly and then stared at the screen in anticipation for a few moments, before a beep and another envelope icon indicated a reply. This too made me smile, and with almost superhuman speed I tapped in my new response, before putting the phone back on the table, expecting no further correspondence.
It was early afternoon, and I still had a lot of Paris to explore, but I was experiencing pain throughout my whole body, and didn’t feel much like going anywhere. I showered for the second time that day, and felt marginally more energised and better for having washed off the surprisingly large quantity of salt that had accumulated on my body thanks to an unheralded amount sweating during the race. I dried off quickly and lay back down on the bed, to have few moments of rest, before I attempted to do anything with the rest of my day.
Several hours later I awoke, surprised to find that I had drifted off. I attempted to sit up but to no avail, by body was as stiff as a board. Panicking, I reached over to my phone to check the time and to see if I had any more messages. Thankfully it was still quite early, and no messages had been received. I felt like having another shower, and duly did so, having sufficient time to kill and being physically incapable of much else. I dried off once more and unpacked my grey holdall, pulling out my best pair of jeans, a fairly decent polo shirt, and a brand new pair of designer trainers that thankfully did not share the rather potent odour that was currently emanating from my running shoes. I dressed slowly, feeling pain and discomfort with every movement. I massaged some wax into my hair, liberally applied some cologne and examined myself in the mirror. I looked pretty tired around the eyes, but otherwise, in my humble opinion, I had never looked better. Even after training for and completing a marathon, I wasn’t exactly svelte, but I was certainly trimmer than I’d been for years, and although post run I was as weak as a kitten, my muscles had swelled up considerably, giving the illusion of me being quite strapping. I flashed a cheesy grin at my reflection. I was ready for the next step.