Bring the flannel

It started, as these things now do, in the group chat. Though I want it on the record that the evening itself began innocently.

Masters of the Universe was on Prime. That was the whole plan. A daft film on in the background, me half watching it, half doom-scrolling, fully horizontal. And somewhere in the scroll, my phone's algorithm, which has clearly been reading this blog, served me a headline. Olly Murs, aged 42, has only gone and run a sub-20 5K. Men's Health wrote it up. "Advanced for his age," apparently.

Olly bloody Murs.

I sent it to the group at fourteen minutes past midnight, with commentary:

F8ckin olly murs

A grown man, in the dark, furious at a pop star. And honestly, that should have been the whole story. This post was going to be about Olly Murs: what it does to a man to have his stupid, specific number casually collected by the bloke who sang Troublemaker. Then, at 2:37 the next afternoon, Gilbo replied.

I think I could do a sub 20 ;)

That winky face. I've read it forty times and it gets more provocative on every pass.

It was a call to arms and we both knew it. I think he's sick of hearing about the number. And he knows me well enough to know exactly which lever to pull: not encouragement, not sympathy, just a direct application of competitive pride. Or possibly he's angling for another mention in the blog. Either way, he was under my skin within the minute, and Olly Murs had lost custody of this post for good.

Now. Gilbo is a mate. Gilbo is also a man with a 1:35 half marathon and a 3:41 marathon to his name, and he knows it. Strength-focused runner. Does his squats. Has Opinions about my training being run by a robot. So here's how the afternoon actually went: he said the thing, and I went straight to his Strava, found his 5K best, and sent it back to him captioned "Prove it!" It's 21:28. Mine is 20:15. I have rarely felt more alive.

His defence arrived on cue, and it deserves quoting properly rather than paraphrasing:

You know full well I focus on distance not puny 5k fun runs

Puny 5k fun runs. Followed, after one more jab from me about what all that mileage should be worth, by his entire PB list, posted into the chat distance by distance, like a man laying out surgical instruments. Half marathon 1:35. Marathon 3:41. A 50K, for some reason. The man has range, I'll give him that.

And one detail I can't leave out, because it explains the entire friendship: we checked the 400m. Dead heat. 1:21 each, to the second. Eighteen years of knowing each other and our fast-twitch is identical.

Because here's the thing about building an AI coach in public. Everything becomes fuel. The good nights, the bad sessions, and apparently, the mates who get lippy of an afternoon. Ted got a note that essentially said: log this. Gilbo's arrogance is now an official training input.

The terms

There aren't any. That's the point.

No money changed hands. Nothing got written down. A bet has stakes you can pay off and walk away from. This has pride, which is worse, because pride compounds. The shape of it was simple: the two of us, same start line, Delamere parkrun, both chasing sub-20, racing each other while we do it. Neither of us has ever broken twenty minutes. Mine is sixteen seconds away and four years old. His is a minute and a half away with excellent excuses. The closer PB versus the better reasons. Sub-20 doesn't care about either.

And to be fair to him, his own analysis of why it would work is the truest thing anyone said all afternoon:

I am quite sure that if you and I went for a 5k run this week with the express intent of getting sub 20 we would both get it simply due to sheer refusal to let the other win

He even knew what he was doing while he was doing it. "I am going to regret this arrogant rant I can tell," he said, mid-rant, not stopping. And when the date went in, he signed off with the line of the day:

I'll bring a flannel for you to dry your tear on once we're done

Ted's contribution to the race-day calendar entry, once the note reached him, remains my favourite thing the robot has ever written: "Gilbo is 6 days post-marathon. Show no mercy. Bring the flannel."

My coach is quoting my mates' trash talk back at me now. I built that. On purpose, apparently.

The date dance

Then began the great logistics ballet, which anyone who's tried to organise anything with another adult in possession of a family and a calendar will recognise.

First date: the 8th of August. Ruled out almost immediately, because the day before is the Birmingham Business Fives, an inter-company five-a-side tournament in Aston that everyone involved takes exactly one degree too seriously, and turning up to a lifetime-best attempt on legs that spent the previous afternoon being kicked by strangers from other companies is not a plan, it's a punchline.

When word of the deferral reached the group, Scouse Ian (the group's fourth member, "I-an" to the Finns at the company where all four of us met, a pronunciation that has now outlasted most of our employment there) asked the only question that matters:

What's ted had to say about this?

Fair. So I asked him. Directly. And I regret to report that Brian appeared.

Sit down, young man.

You've gone and bet a man money you can run a five kilometre race quicker than you ever have. Fair enough. Bold. I like bold. And then, a fortnight out, you've signed up to play five-a-side. On a Friday. With people from work.

Do you know what happens on those pitches? Nothing good. There's always one lad. Turns up in shin pads he's owned since school, hasn't run further than the fridge since March, and he's decided today is the day he becomes Roy Keane. He will find your ankle. He will apologise. It won't grow back by the twenty-second.

And you'll be diving about because there's a trophy involved, will you? A trophy. Made of plastic. Bought off the internet for eleven pounds. Meanwhile Gilbo is at home doing his squats and telling everyone in that group chat exactly what he thinks of your chances, and he'd love nothing more than a text saying you've done your calf chasing a lost cause into the fence.

So here's what you'll do. You'll warm up properly, like a grown man. You'll wear the right boots. And when the ball goes into the corner in the last minute of the last game, you'll let it go. Let it go. It's not your ball, it's not your race, and it's not worth eleven quid of plastic.

Then you'll go home, put your legs up, and let the dog look at you disapprovingly.

Good lad.

Three notes on that. One: nobody has bet anybody any money. I've told him it's not a bet. The correction is filed, and he's clearly decided the story is better his way, which is the most human thing he's ever done. Two: he has met the lad in the shin pads. Everyone has met the lad in the shin pads. Three: "let the dog look at you disapprovingly" is now official post-tournament protocol, and Bernard was born ready.

So: the 22nd, pencilled. And the 22nd was quietly perfect. I'm camping with my daughter the week before, back on the Friday, no work all week. I'd have arrived at that start line more rested than I've been all year. All that was missing was actually asking Gilbo.

And here's where I have to be honest, because this blog doesn't work otherwise. I never got round to it. The pencil never became a pen. Weeks of Ted rebuilds and site tinkering and actual life, and the one piece of admin that mattered, a single WhatsApp message, sat in the mental drafts folder.

And then the 22nd got taken

By the time I remembered, the group chat beat me to it. Gilbo, announcing he'd signed up for something. The Phoenix Afterglow, in Manchester. A timed ultra. Date: the 22nd.

The 22nd. The exact Saturday I'd been quietly building towards. And when I asked what distance:

I am planning on running for the 7 hours

Seven hours. The man who called 5Ks puny fun runs had entered seven continuous hours of running, on the precise Saturday I'd earmarked for our twenty minutes.

And before anyone reaches for the conspiracy: I went back through the chat and checked. I never told him the 22nd was the date. The pencil never left my own head. He's completely innocent, which is somehow the most annoying part.

So the showdown didn't get cancelled with a bang. It dissolved. Death by diary. Football took the 8th, an ultra took the 22nd, and somewhere in between I discovered I didn't fancy fighting for a third date.

Yet.

That "yet" is doing real work, and I want it on the record. The sub-20 attempt is the whole point of this project. When it happens, it gets a named day, a proper build, and my full attention. What it doesn't get is squeezed into a gap between other people's race calendars as a grudge match I half-prepared for. If I'm spending it, I'm spending it properly.

The better ending

Because while all this diary chaos was going on, another entry had quietly gone in. The North West Triathlon. Sprint distance, Nantwich, the 20th of September. Five hundred metres in a heated brine pool, 21 kilometres through the South Cheshire lanes on the bike, then a flat 5K on grass to finish.

I'm entered.

Dave's entered.

Gilbo's entered.

A word on Dave, actually, since he's a third of this story and suspiciously quiet in it. The chat has now asked him twice how the training's going. Once from Gilbo back in July. Once from me last week, directly, by name. The man who conjured this whole reunion into existence, who announced to the group that he was getting in shape for it, has answered both enquiries with a silence you could park a bus in. Readers of Split 03 will remember my concerns about the base Dave is building from. The silence is not easing them. September's coming either way, big man.

You've seen the photo. Split 03, the three of us in race numbers, 2008. Eighteen years later, every man in that photo is on the same entry list again. What actually happened that day, and the sub-20 I may or may not have run in the middle of it, keeps for Nantwich week. It's worth the wait.

So the race is dead and I'm genuinely not annoyed, because look what replaced it. Instead of the two of us trading elbows at a parkrun over one number, all three of us are on the same start line in September, and there's a 5K sitting right at the end of it waiting to settle things anyway. On tired legs. Off the bike. Which is either much fairer or much crueller, and I honestly can't decide.

And the 22nd? The 22nd still happens. While Gilbo is off running his seven hours somewhere, I'll be at Delamere at nine in the morning, alone, running a time trial nobody's watching. No rival, no chat, no one to beat. Just a benchmark, a stopwatch, and a very honest number to build the autumn on.

Same Saturday. Two different races. No shared start line until Nantwich.

One target now. The 20th of September. Everything points at the brine pool.

What that did to Ted, the training plan, and roughly a month of my life, that's the next Split. It involves the worst maths a robot has ever done, a rest day scheduled inside a football tournament, and the discovery that I'd accidentally sentenced myself to deload until September.

Bring the flannel.