Last night I ran for 1 hour and 2 minutes, with one line – no, one word – from “Joe le Taxi“, bouncing repeatedly through my head. That word, and I can hardly bring myself to write it for fear of what it might set off, was “embouteillage”.
This is the peril of running without a soundtrack – you have no control over what might run through your mind instead. Last night, in the middle of Hampstead, I remembered that I actually planned a list of things to think about before my last marathon, to combat this. It didn’t work.
The one good thing about the repeating “em-bout-eill-age” is that it reminded me of the David Sedaris story about having moved to France without being able to speak French. “Bottleneck” was the one word he knew and he just repeated it in reply to any question. Bottleneck bottleneck bottleneck.
If anyone had actually asked me a question during last night’s run, I may have done the same.
Not a Jogger 