I wanna be on TV....

Not really. I just thought I’d use the title from the Green Day song for two reasons:

The first is, I almost was on TV... well, I could have been. Well, I did the Great Edinburgh Run and that was on TV. Sadly, 10,000 other runners were also doing the Great Edinburgh Run at the same time and they only featured the really outstanding runners, i.e. the ones who had a chance of winning (not me) or the ones dressed as daleks, storm troopers, Princess Leia, bananas or giant leprechauns (definitely not me).

One of my friends from the telebetting centre told me that she stepped outside to watch the Sheffield Half Marathon Runners going past last week (we ran right past where I work). Well, she said she went outside to watch the runners, but she probably just nipped out for a crafty smoke... but anyway, she told me that whilst she was smoking her sneaky cigarette she was also looking out for me, “but,” she complained, “I couldn’t see you at all. All the runners looked the same. They all had their hair tied back and they were all wearing running stuff... I wouldn’t have known you.” Well, whilst I was watching the Great Edinburgh Run on television (my husband videoed it for me) I could suddenly see what she was getting at. All the runners did look the same (with the obvious exceptions of the daleks and the bloke dressed up as Princess Leia) – I wouldn’t have recognised me. (In fact, I did, at one point, think I had recognised myself, but it turned out to be a man wearing a very similar t-shirt – worrying).

Onto the second reason for the title of this being the same as the Green Day song – I got tickets to see Green Day!! Yes! I am so excited (despite the fact that the event itself isn’t taking place until October). In fact, coincidentally, the concert itself is actually taking place the day after my very last run for the Weston 100 – and what a great way to celebrate – to leave the kids with my parents and go out for the night and watch my very favourite band. The fact that I’ve got the tickets at all is something of a miracle because I came back from the Great Edinburgh Run and found that they had pretty much sold out everywhere. The only ones to be had seemed to be from ticket touting agencies at 2-3 times their original face value price. Much as I love Green Day (and I love Green Day – I can’t think how many Green Day songs playing on my Ipod have seen me through my training runs and around the various courses of the races I have done) I can’t afford to pay £110 for a ticket to go and see them – so I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to be seeing them this time (and being as this is the first time they have toured in the UK for the past four years, I was resigning myself to another four years of Green Day-less-ness). Anyway, then, just by chance (in an attempt to console myself about this miserable turn of fate) I logged onto their website and found that there were some tickets still to be bought, but that they were individual tickets dotted around the arena – none seated together - so I bought two. (Yes, what this means is that my husband, who will be accompanying me – hence leaving the kids with my parents – will not be able to sit with me. In fact, I’m in row M and he’s in row N – but at least we’ll have the mutual experience to talk about after). (In actual fact, my husband doesn’t want to go and see them at all – he doesn’t even like them that much and he hates arena concerts – it’s a measure of his love for me, I feel, that he’s prepared to come with me to a venue he loathes, to not sit with me throughout a concert he doesn’t even want to go to and see a band he doesn’t particularly like. Oh well – I’d do it for him if, say, Slayer played somewhere and he really wanted to go).

Anyway, that’s the reason for the title of this entry. I don’t really want to be on TV. I don’t care about that. In fact, if I’m honest, I’d rather not be. But that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the Great Edinburgh Run. It was an amazing experience to run along with 10,000 other people. I had a fantastic time. Edinburgh is just such a beautiful city that the 6 ½ miles or so went in a flash. The (slightly condescending, I felt) commentator on Channel 5 described the course as “challenging” and went on to make derogatory remarks about how charity runners never train enough. Well, I don’t know who you are, you silly patronising man, but I didn’t find the course “challenging” at all – OK there were some hills (and, OK, I admit, that around the 8k mark the only thing I was conversing with was my own pain) but – BUT I got a personal best on the course (59 mins 23 secs), the atmosphere was amazing and I just really enjoyed the experience (and that’s including the fact that Lastminute.com buggered up my room booking for the previous evening and I had to spend the night in the hotel owner’s private guest room because they’d double-booked the room). This is something that I’ve written to complain about (not because the hotel owner was less than gracious – he wasn’t – he was fantastic and I just felt as if I was imposing upon him dreadfully for the kindness and courtesy I received from himself and his family), but because Lastminute are big enough not to bugger up such things and, with this in view, only a donation to my justgiving site from them will make me feel better on this point.

My next run is even bigger than the Great Edinburgh – it’s the Great Manchester and it features 33,000 runners. It’s being covered on BBC2 this time and if you want to get on TV and are running that race, you do either need to (a) win it; or (b) dress up as a camel or a cyberman or something. I will be wearing my home made Sex Pistols/Blue Peter influenced T-shirt and probably won’t figure at all. I certainly won’t be winning it – I’m in the last wave of starting – again - and by the time I get to cross the start line, the race will already have been won by someone or other (it took me 12 minutes to cross the start line in the Great Edinburgh and that’s 10,000 runners – it’s going to be even longer with 33,000 crossing that line) – but that’s not going to stop me enjoying the experience.