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Okay. Today was one of those crazy days that I haven’t had in a looooooong while.

I worked from home in the morning, all business as usual. 

Around 2pm someone knocks on the door. I open the door and see a guy quickly running away. What the hell, I think, while taking a few steps up the street to see who this guy was.

It turns out he was one of those charity guys that go door to door asking for money, no big deal then. Panic over.

I’m about to turn around and get back home when I hear my front door slamming shut behind my back. Holy crap. It must have been the wind or something.

Here I am, locked out of my house in my pijama-like shorts, scrappy intel t-shirt (which says “vanilla wafers: soft and tasty, silicon wafers: crunchy and conductive”) and barefoot.

No money, no keys, no phone. Nothing. And my girlfriend won’t be home before 6pm. And beside that I don’t know exactly where she works and I don’t remember her phone number on the top of my head. No way to get back inside. Not a chance.

What would you have done? 

F**k. I spent about ten minutes swearing and going up and down my street, I was furious. After a while I had to surrender to my feelings and I decided to put the day to good use and do some exercise.

Here we go, so guess what? I run barefoot from Clapham to Richmond park and back, which is, listen carefully,  about 12 miles and a half (almost half a marathon)! Barefoot!

The problem is that I’m not really a runner, and my outfit was, to say the least, unusual for someone working out.

What an experience boys… that’s what happened:

• About 10 kids laughed at me
• A semi-pro runner stopped me and told me I’m crazy
• 6 by-passers suggested me to buy a pair of shoes
• 2 very hot girls openly laughed at me
• A couple of tramps looked at me with true compassion in their eyes

It is actually very cool when you give up all of your expectations and just keep going, and going, and going. In a way it reminded me of how you need to be to start your own business: a bit nuts, willing to raise the bar, and stubborn. 

In the end the day has not been thrown away, as I think I learned a few lessons:

• Running a marathon barefoot actually *is* an achievable goal
• If you run barefoot, your feet do really tell you when to stop. Tough if you’re just half a way through though…
• Doing something utterly crazy will make you feel 100 times more alive than usual! You should definitely do it once in a while!
• Time spent on your own, without any twitter/facebook/email/sms/rss is really rewarding. You can think and reason about all the things you have on your plate, without that feeling of stress and urgency that often clutters your day and your mind.

And that’s it really. And tomorrow will be just another, usual, boring, day.

And now back to blisters mending ;)