Karinsmiles

The Broken Records gig on Sunday was really good, they did everything that’s on their myspace page plus a couple of other things I hadn’t heard before. The live set was better than any of their recordings and there was a good-sized crowd but enough room for us old farts to linger at the back and still see the stage. I’m not sure why the guy in front of me felt the need to talk all the way through it though, he could have saved his money and just gone to a pub if he wanted conversation – and while we’re on the subject, why do people pay large sums of money for concerts and then drink so much that they can’t remember any of it?

It was raining again this morning and I was torn between running to work, getting on my bike and just going for the bus. I ran in yesterday in torrential rain and learnt several things :

• a baseball cap may not be fetching but it does stop the rain pounding on your head and keeps the water out of your eyes
• 30 year old Gore-Tex is no longer waterproof (and smells when soaked)
• when you think you’re as wet as you can be, another torrent of rain proves you wrong
• running through 4 inches of standing water for 200 yards is pretty unpleasant but actually wading through a foot of water for 5 yards is even worse
• when the water drips off your jacket onto your shorts they start blotting it all up and sepping up the inside of your jacket.

However, there’s something very satisfying about running in bad weather. This morning I eventually went minimal and ran through the rain in a crop top and shorts, only putting a T-shirt on just before I went into work (some people may have just eaten breakfast). It looks like there may be more opportunities to experiment with wet-weather gear over the next few days so I may have established the optimum kit by the weekend.

Anyway, running in fairly warm rain is a lot less wretched than walking uphill all day in cold rain with a heavy backpack, however amazing the waterfalls are – but more about our Icelandic holiday later.