I have a surefire way to guarantee you won’t overbuy at your favourite fabric store – run home from there.
Yesterday I took the day off work because we had some important but tedious appointments in the afternoon, but I wanted to squeeze in a quick trip to Goldhawk Road to buy the silk for Pip’s christmas pyjamas, and since I run Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, I needed to work that in somehow, too. So I was whining to Pip about how I couldn’t fit it all in because it was also a low tide day (long story), and she just said “Well, why don’t you just run to the store?”.
I stopped, thought about it for a minute, and then checked how far it’d be from mine to Shepherd’s Bush and realised it was only about 13km. I regularly run 10k as my usual circuit so I figured running home wouldn’t be too much further and by running from the store rather than to it, I wouldn’t be all sweaty to touch the fabrics.
So yesterday morning I got all my running kit on, took the bladder out of my Camelbak (the only bag I’ve ever found that doesn’t bounce!) in preparation for the fabric, and set off on the tube towards Goldhawk Road. I went in, got the 5m of silk I needed plus coordinating thread, rolled it up into the Camelbak, set my Nike+ going and set off home.
Only I took a wrong turn around Shepherd’s Bush and ended up running down Holland Road instead of Holland Park Avenue and had to ask for directions around Earls Court somewhere. Oops. But in any event, I made it home eventually, with the silk intact, my run fit in, and the tide on my side.
And I couldn’t fall to temptation since I knew I’d have to carry it thousands of steps home.
The funny thing is, it takes me an hour on the tube to get from mine to Goldhawk Road as it’s all on the slower surface lines, and it took me an hour and twenty minutes to run the same journey, even with my little, ahem, diversion. If the trains could actually be classed as “speeding”, I’d feel like Superman right now!