En Passant – An opportunity missed… again

DAMMIT, time’s run away from me again this year. Seriously, can you believe it’s June? What happened to March; didn’t we have one this year? And I’ve always understood that February is only messed about with in leap years, so how come this year it consisted of only about two weeks?
So, I waved bye-bye to the kestrels who left Vryheid on April 4 to fly back to northern China and Siberia to breed, and then I thought, “Right, now to get fit for Comrades,” and lo and behold, before I could spit and say “sawdust”, it’s June and the Comrades
is over!
I really had visions of running it this year [yeah, right! Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it, and the other’s got J&B] because it’s now been four years since I gave up smoking. The actual date, my fourth anniversary, is June 25, and although I still possess shirts
and jerseys that have cigarette burns to remind me that I once smoked, I now seldom think about it. While I have no doubt that decades of smoking is still evident in a remnant of gunge in my lungs’ sumps, I imagine that my lungs’ function has vastly improved
since this time four years ago.
So, I had visions.
And when I heard that old Zola Budd was going to run the Comrades again this year (and didn’t she do well, 7th place among the ladies) I was doubly determined to run too. I mean, they named a taxi after Zola Budd, and I had visions of them naming one of the new taxis after me following my remarkable Comrades 2014 performance. Imagine, a taxi called the JayCee!
In anticipation, in April I started my fitness programme. This began one Monday morning in April when I flung open the bedroom curtains, flung open the windows, and bare-chested started some vigorous deep breathing while waving my arms about athletically, or at least it felt athletically. All it did was start me coughing and frighten the hadedas on the neighbour’s roof.
Ok, I said, obviously I need to be more discrete, so on Tuesday when I went though to the bathroom for my shower, I thought, right, in the privacy of my own bathroom let’s try a couple of press-ups. So, I took off my old curry-stained dressing gown (don’t
ask) and in my birthday suit got down on the bathroom floor to do a push-up or two. Then Doris walked in.
On Wednesday, I thought, stuff this, and then realised that living on the second floor of a block of flats, I had, in effect, my own treadmill. Every day I go up and down 40 steps, if I did it twice or three times it’d be good exercise. So, I said bye-bye to Doris and
went downstairs to go to work, then turned around and went up again, then down again, and apparently, word among the residents in our block of flats is that I have either gone completely dilly or have got very absent minded.
Meanwhile, of course, I had to begin to sort out my running gear. I discovered that my silky shorts with the split up the side had a problem negotiating my stomach which has ballooned since I gave up smoking. I found that if I wore my shorts below my stomach, I looked like I grew mealies in the Free State, and if I wore them above my stomach I looked like a right wally (and besides, blood
supply to the crotch was cut off). So, anyway, Doris, using all her needlework skills and an office stapler managed to adjust the waist which sorted out that problem.

My old vest with the curry stains I decided was still fine, as was my Rambo sweatband.
My old takkies were a concern. I don’t know if you remember that some years ago the soles had come away from the uppers, and I tried to fix them with old contact glue left over from fixing the tiles on the loo floor. Then while the glue was drying I held things together with some clothes pegs, remember? Well, when I didn’t run Comrades that year I just threw the takkies into the cupboard,
and then this year discovered that the clothes pegs had stuck fast.
I dismantled the pegs by removing that little spring thingy, and in most cases the pegs then fell apart leaving one side or the other still sticking to the takkie. With a little handsaw I managed to cut off the bits of peg that were jutting out, but it does mean that there are a couple of little wooden knobs still attached here and there on the takkies. It ain’t a fashion statement but I was not, I decided, running Comrades to make a fashion statement.
Besides, the little knobs of clothes peg on the bottom of the takkies I figured would eventually be rubbed off on the tarmac and in the meantime would, like studs on a rugby boot, provide extra traction. Trust me, every negative has a positive if you look for it. My old Kellerprinz tracksuit has seen better days. The elastic went “pap” years ago so Doris replaced that for me, and then she sewed some decorative cloth patches over the worst old cigarette burn holes – one peace sign, Walt Disney’s Goofy, a couple of daisies, a Lion Lager badge and a skull and crossbones. Wearing my old tracksuit I look like an under-sponsored Pied Piper.
And then, having prepared everything I forgot all about the Comrades

until Sunday when I turned on the TV.
Oh well, there’s always next year.