Is the future here yet?

Apparently last Wednesday was designated “Fat Wednesday”. Experts claim it is the day that is long enough since New Year’s Day for people to have completely given up on all their resolutions but not close enough to summer for them to worry about starting to work on a beach body. Before I totally dismiss this I should say that I did notice that the gym/swimming pool/streets are less busy than they were before I went to San Francisco. I had assumed that it was a combination of holidays and people not being arsed (also Arsenal v Liverpool was on television). I too found it difficult to start training again. After the Alcatraz swim I took the remaining two weeks off to recover and enjoy my holiday but I am now having trouble preparing for future challenges. Maybe these experts are onto something.

Now to totally dismiss it. I can identify exactly why I am finding it difficult without the aid of a research grant and, I suspect, making facts fit around a conclusion. I am having trouble focusing on how to train. When it was just the swim it was easy, I swam a lot. Now I need to ease back on swimming and replace those sessions with something else – but what? Do I train for orienteering by jogging through a wood holding a map? Do I start training for the rowing by going to the gym and getting on the rowing machine? Do I start training now for the triathlon by cycling more? Probably yes to each of those but then where does the running, swimming and general fitness work fit in? And on top of that I need to organise equipment, travel and accommodation, maybe try to work out some more cerebral challenges and it would be quite nice to fit some work, food and sleep into the day too. I wouldn’t totally dismiss the option of a life either.

At the moment organising this is like trying to squeeze dozens of people into a telephone box (memo to self: possible new challenge – world record attempt at squeezing people into a telephone box). I’m not even sure what I’m doing writing this rubbish when only 1 person is reading it. I could have cycled about a mile by now. Let the experts do something useful and start inventing all the things we were promised by the Jetsons. So Reed, Chen, Games Console men, Hawking, Dyson and Jobs, it’s time to stop making small improvements to perfectly adequate products, stop finding out the secret of the universe or putting videos on the Internet I want my food in tablet form, space ships, exercising without getting out of bed and a robot maid. Also whilst I’m ranting get me a job with Spacely’s Space Sprockets – on 3 hours a day, 3 days a week George could have done a decades worth of challenges and he never seemed to have any trouble funding anything despite the lavish lifestyle of that original WAG wannabe Jane . And as for those Flintstones...