“Have you been trying to lose weight?” asked the nurse.
“I’ve been trying to run fast.”

I recently sat down with the multi-events calculator and last year’s results, to begin setting myself goals for each event in this year’s World Championships, in just under 100 days time. I charted last year’s results; what I thought I could comfortably assume I would achieve this season; and stretch-goals, which I might achieve in my wildest dreams with a lot of work.

I then travelled down to compete in the first Southern Athletics League meet of the season- and in my first event, 400m hurdles, took 6 seconds off last year’s time, trouncing my stretch-goal. Gosh.

I certainly didn’t start training for a tetradecathlon to lose weight, but it just so happened that around that time, Arron bought digital scales. I’d set an arbitrary target- a happy half-way between my weight then, and my weight as an acrobatic flyer.

For the first year of athletics training, the scales stayed firm, until the beginning of this year when things started to take a tumble. This month I hit that arbitrary target.

Perhaps I’m just bad at gauging where to place those goals.