Crisis in Holland & Barrett

26.03.2015
Day 345
Too wet for Erik and Team 6 am Fitness girls, so the 20min easy run scheduled for half marathon race week is all I do

It's a mini taper because I am racing, not pacing, Sunday's half marathon and I am hoping to benefit from the long weeks of training. I shall try to be optimistic, which is, in a way, throwing down quite a gauntlet, given today's ill-favoured mood.
I could put my negativity down to the filthy weather, which kept me lingering over the breakfast table, when any other Thursday I'd be with Erik and the girls. Lingering over the breakfast table means ill-advised extra helpings of muesli. There's also the little matter of a still impending grandchild, which was promised to make an appearance on Tuesday, although no word from my son. I fidget and sigh.
Then, a total of four gloomy hours at my desk, trying to write, and checking emails, deleting the spam therein and wishing that some managing editor, any managing editor, or account manager, or any damn person with a budget would enquire about my availability for work.
After too much tussling and getting nowhere, I give in to distractions and cycle off in search of suitable birthday presents for daughter. In Holland &Barrett I see myself replicated in the frail looking woman buying glucosamine gel, in the grumpy woman fanning herself and asking about the prices of the sage, the black cohosh and the magnesium supplements she's stocking up on, in the slightly stout woman in running tights buying go-faster gels and isotonic drinks. All of a certain age, all manner of midlife crises in the flesh. There's no-one young or male,  except the people serving behind the counter. Are we all delusional, the aching, hot-flushing, desperately exercising faded women who populate these snake oil shops?
I buy some peppermint oil to ease my IBS symptoms (another middle aged woman's malady, which often makes us ponder ovarian cancer) and think of Angelina Jolie, tipped into menopause at 39, because she carries the marker for that silent killer.
I pull myself together.