Want to know what your life and dreams will be like past 40?

Here's a window into the post 40 world and a glimpse of my worrying psyche.

With Sue and a friend taking the kids to a theatre last night I had the place to myself. I could go wild: eat anything, drink anything, watch anything, do anything.

So what wild revelry did I opt for?

At 6.45pm I made a brew, and took myself, a novel and the netbook to bed. By 9pm I'd been falling asleep for a good half hour so I turned off the light and went to sleep. Wonderful.

Trouble was that at 2am I was awake again.

I'd just had a dream where I'd gone into a little old newsagent/corner shop/sweet shop of the sort you don't see nowadays but were commonplace in the 70s/80s and was looking at all the different sweets.

It was like a coca and sugar based Aladdin's cave: there were jar upon jar of sweets that could be bought by the 1/4lb; the counter was glass fronted and contained trays of liquorice, white mice, and various 'penny sweets'; the entire counter was almost covered with a sloping display with every manner of chocolate bar that does or has existed; and when I woke I was looking at the 'top shelf' (with all the illicit connotations that brings forth) containing various other sweets including foot long tubes of Rowntrees fruit gums. I'm hoping there was nothing Freudian about the top shelf desire for something foot long...

Having woke, I lay for over an hour in that strange state where you are fully awake, very conscious that you can't get back to sleep, with my mind absolutely whirring, still in a slightly unreal dreamlike way, thinking about sweets, chocolate, carb loading, energy gels etc.

I think I know what caused all this.

The mind whirring and the inability to sleep right through is a sign that I'm on edge. In this instance its part work, part marathon and part the knowledge of tough runs today and Sunday.

The content links back to last night. As I lay in bed I was looking at Runners World website and the Paris thread where there had been discussion of gels and carbs. That was echoed in the dream and was more clearly there in the confused 'hyper-thinking' that then kept me awake.

I also felt a strong temptation to eat sweets last night. I often do if everyone else goes out. Its my treat. Not 12ft from where I lay yesterday evening was a box of Marksies Jelly Beans that I'd recently bought and put to one side to take to Paris. I had to use a fair bit of willpower to stop myself raiding them but that very clearly played into my dreams.

With post-forty excesses limited to strong tea, Agatha Christie and early nights is anyone now rethinking their views on euthanasia I wonder?


Beyond my (sugar) decayed mind there's little to report from yesterday. I went to the gym and did 30 minutes on the cross trainer plus core stability exercises and stretches, and ate sensibly.

There's 12 miles to do today, with 8 at half marathon pace. That's a tough run but I feel fairly optimistic. My mood all this week, as regards the marathon, has been upbeat but today's blog entry has contained enough of an insight into my mind so, perhaps, more on that another day?