How about a short story of Personal Embarrassment and Failure to brighten your day?

Mutiple Disclaimers! The below is

? NOT directly related to Covid-19 and the rapidly unfolding situation across the globe.

? NOT about sharing pictures of Zoom meetings, testing the capabilities and limits of the tool by showing the entire and global Tinyclues team waving, including a dog and a hamster.

? NOT about sharing advice on how to work productively from home with your dog barking at your feet, and your children farting in your general direction (Monty Pythons, anyone?).

So, with the fool's hope of slightly brightening the day for anyone who reads this, let me share a story of personal embarrassment that happened almost exactly two years ago.

At the time, in 2018, I was constantly traveling back and forth between Paris and New-York after launching Tinyclues in North America. I was also preparing for the Paris Marathon in April, and a few weeks prior to that race, I was supposed to prep by running a half marathon. Since I was going to be in NY at that time, I had looked for, and found a race within a couple hours driving distance of Manhattan, in Rock Hill, NY. The race was called "Celebrate Life Half Marathon". I hadn't paid much attention to the "topic" of "celebrating life" when I signed up, it was above all the only race that was taking place on March 11, exactly 4 weeks before the Paris Marathon, and that's what mattered.

Runners know that some races allow you to personalize your bib with a nickname, instead of showing your first name, and every time it's possible, I choose a ridiculous nickname - mostly, I've been choosing "Grave Vénère" which is, in French, how an angry teenager in the late 90's might have said something like "I'm pissed off" (I was fairly peaceful as a teenager, so maybe part of me regrets not having taken advantage of the only period in my life when I could have acted angry and rude all day long, and no one would have cared). Those who know me also know how I love ridiculous phrases in every language, such as "Totally Tubular", "Awesome Blossom" or "That's dope". Yup - completely outdated, rarely relevant phrases that just pop out of my mouth all day long.

Anyway, long story short, when I picked up my bib, I realized that "Grave Vénère" seemed to have been too many characters to print, and had been cut short - the bib only said "Grave". "Huh", I thought, "not cool, but no big deal."

The next morning, as we were in the line before the race started - then it hit me. This race is called "Celebrate Life Half Marathon" because many runners are cancer survivors (the race also serves as a fund-raiser), and many others who run celebrate and honor family members or friends who survived (or didn't survive, unfortunately) cancer.

And here I am, in the middle of the crowd of runners who are quite emotional about this event, who are wearing clothes with pictures of their loved ones - and I'm wearing a bib saying "Grave", realizing the word can only mean "tomb" in English.

Great choice of word, really, congratulations to myself! I'm wearing the "Tomb" bib on the "Celebrate Life", cancer-fighting race day. Guess what! I kept a really low profile, and made sure my bib was "hidden" as much as I could throughout the race...

What happened next? Well, the half-marathon went alright - and the following month I wanted to make sure that my marathon bib wouldn't create any similar issue - so I just chose to write "vénère !" (it still means "pissed off" in French teenage jargon from the 90's, but slightly less pissed off than "grave vénère"):

Soooo... Did I beat my personal record and had a great race?

NOPE! The race started well, but I injured my knee and quit at km 30 (about 19 miles into the race).

Surely, there has to be a lesson justifying this post, right? Nope! But hopefully this dubious tale of embarrassment and failure was worth your time :-)

If you feel like talking about any topic that's on your mind, whether related to the above, or how to keep some healthy physical activity these days without having as many balconies as Italians do (as they sing songs or do fitness classes "remotely" from their balconies), please feel free to drop me a note!

Be well, be safe. Don't overstock on toilet paper.

Ard.