What a day!

From Diarmaid 'Golden Boy'

I'm sending you this email, because my mobile is in Juan Luis' car, god knows where and the battery on my chordless phone (landline) is fucked since it was 2 months without a charge when I escaped my apartment this summer. I think Alberto let you know what happened so this is mainly to say I'm home and fine. From km23 I had a sharp drop in blood sugar levels and had to walk. Just as I was arriving at the finish, I saw a SAMUR and decided to ask for glucose, but I must have looked like shit because then insisted I go inside and lie down too. For the sake of vanity, I'll add that I ran a decent race up to that point - which of course you have no way of verifying as I conveniently didn't pass the meta :)

Anyway, if I had my wits about me (far from it) there's no way they'd have brought me to a hospital when all I needed was to rest and eat like a Somali, but they have their procedures... I found myself in some hospital which for some reason I first assumed was still in Colmenar Viejo despite having been travelling in the ambulance for at least 15 minutes - go figure! Anyway, by the time I got there - predictably enough - I had recovered enough to walk. Yes - before leaving Colmenar, I had been fairly wobbly after getting up from my nice comfy SAMUR bed and trying to make the last 30 metres the meta.

As hospital visits go, it was remarkably pleasant. By arriving VIP-style by ambulance you (of course) skip any queues - and it was mad busy there today, so all the better. As I later discovered, it as Hospital La Paz - by the new towers. The nurses were great although I had to protest not just once to accelerate or leave the rest of the glucose drip they gave me. I was fine but they kept pricking my finger to read my blood sugar levels, and I don't see how you can go from the first reading of about 68 when arriving at the hospital to 47 after having already taken plenty of glucose. Anyway, I supposed at least one of the lads would be waiting so I felt well enough to leave and tried to escape, but the nurses were adamant that I finish the drip they gave me. 

To be honest, it was all worth it because the nurses and the girl sat beside me were all great - for fuck sake, the things I must do to flirt with women! Ok, so I made my escape, got de-needled, and then faced the next problem. There was no sign of anyone in the casualty waiting room. Fuck! I was half naked. My top was still wet from sweat from the race, but at least I had one of those fashionable hospital gowns that would surely be the most creative choice of fashion of anyone wandering through the centre of Madrid. I had no keys, money or mobile phone (and still only have 2 of 3). After considering my few options, and about to plead with the administrators to let me use the internet to look for Alberto's number, luckily, Alberto appeared from nowhere. 

He had been waiting in another waiting room - figures, since the place was packed and there were probably no seats in the closest one. The guy had been good enough to go to the hospital and wait while I was been glucosed-up and flirting with nurses and patients (hey it's a long and very dry period, ok!). The others had to be somewhere - which is of course understandable, especially Cadalso, with Carolina and his newborn waiting for him. Anyway - problem solved. I simply used the waiting room as a vestuario to finally look human again, and then we grabbed a taxi to Sol. Alvarez had a meeting nearby so I left him there and continued home.