The first person to join me at the Greek Hovel arrives in two weeks and has already warned that our morning routine for the three weeks that follow will commence with a jog or was it a run. Either way I have rather tried to put this to the back of my mind but it struck me today that I have just two weeks without this ordeal left.
For the past two years the closest I have come to this form of masochism is shuffling quickly to the newsagents to get a pack of Marlboro Lights before the newsagent shuts. But I used to be able to do a decent run.
In my London Irish days I could do six miles in an hour on the treadmill (on a gradient) and used to run back from work in Shoreditch to Swiss Cottage. And then go to the gym. But that was a long time ago.
But what the hell. My stomach is still too large and so off I jogged this morning. It took me about ten minutes to head through the olive groves on the dirt track and then down the slope to the spring at the bottom of the valley. By this time I was rather out of breath and sweating like a pig. So I stopped and pondered the spring for a couple of minutes before heading back up the slope.
The slope was rather hard work. I must admit to walking on the steeper bits. There were a lot of steeper bits. But back among the olives I jogged the last half mile and sprinted the last 50 yards. No medals perhaps but ahead of an hour’s manual labour and hours sunbathe and a day at the PC it got my metabolic rate up. Another two weeks of this and I might just give my first guest a bit of a surprise…