I've praised them before and I'll praise them again!

Back in June I was obviously feeling a bit flush and decided to splash out on a lovely Garmin Forerunner 405. I loved it to bits, I really liked being able to see where I had been, how my speed varied as I hit hills etc. On Tuesday however it decided that it had worked hard enough and died on me! Not great timing as I was hoping to have it for Sunday's race, much easier to look at my watch to see how slowly I am running than to have to do complicated mental calculations while trying not to run into the person in front of me!

I idly sent off an email to the 'contact us' button on the Harrod's Sweatshop website, explaining that the watch was dead, that I no longer had my receipt, and mentioning that I was gutted as I was running on Sunday. I didn't expect to get a reply within minutes, but I got one. The manager of the department said that they normally send gadgets away for testing to see if they can be repaired when they are more than a month old, but as I needed mine for Sunday he would make and exception and do a straight exchange. All I needed to do was pop mine back into the store and collect the one he had put to one side for me! Hurrah! Now all I needed to do was plot a trip to Knightsbridge!

I dashed up there this morning after school drop off, and once again mourned the emigration and holidays of my shopping buddies! I really do need to recruit some more partners in crime. It may be far more efficient to shop alone, I bought new over knee chocolate brown boots from Russell & Bromley, nail varnish, chocolate, socks and a high viz running vest, exchanged my Garmin and managed to get back to the car park in less than an hour, but it is no where near as much fun!

I've been home a while now and set up my new Garmin. I am going to have to leave calibration of my foot pod until after the race, as I won't run again before Sunday, and don't want to risk messing up my timing of the race by trying to do two things at once! I just need to get organised now, I have letters to iron onto the front of my running vest, I need to attach the timing chip to my trainers, find a suitable bag and label it, locate safety pins and pin number to vest, etc. etc. etc.!

If I could get rid of the cough and sore throat before Sunday, that would be a bonus!