The marathon training schedule had me down for an 11-miler today but when Turner offered me a free place in the British 10k London Run it was too good to turn down.
So at 9.30am I found myself queuing under the clouds at the start line in Piccadilly with 24,000 others, many of them wearing the official corporate t-shirt and many others sporting charity vests. The race set off in a series of waves, each wave full of widely varying running abilities with lots of straggling groups of matching fund-raisers.
And that was the problem with this event: the vast number of fun runners and fun walkers of all shapes and sizes made if very difficult to gain any running momentum. It was a case of weaving and dodging all the way round, sometimes putting the brakes on sharpish when the gap between a wobbly fund-raising bottom and a group of women in personalised cancer research shirts suddenly closed.
I was also surprised to see a few people gasping with their hands on their knees as early as the 3k mark, as though the distance had taken them by surprise already. I really don't mean to sound harsh - anyone who puts on their trainers and gets out there to raise cash for a cause is doing a Good Thing - but it made overtaking very difficult on the narrow, single-carriageway, central London roads.
It would have been much better to separate the waves into expected finish times, as they do for the half marathons I've run in, but I guess that would be an organisational nightmare for an event of this size.
Anyway, I trotted round in a reasonable time of 48'23 and rehydrated with a protein shake on the steps near the Duke of York statue on The Mall. The finisher's medal is handsome and I like the New Balance shirt - but I wouldn't rush to do that race again.
No doubt about it, if there was an award for the best 10k river route in Britain this would win it.
Start at Hammersmith Bridge. Plenty of bike stands next to the houseboats near The Rutland Arms if you need to cycle there.
Furnivall Gardens and Hammersmith Bridge
Run west with the river on your left, past rose-dappled Furnivall Gardens on your right then down the little passageway in front of the tiny and tempting Dove pub, the legendary birthplace of Rule Britannia. Emerge past William Morris's wisteria-dappled old house and Latymer Prep School and jog on towards the tiny crow's nest where I'm going to have my imaginary 50th birthday party.
That's Linden House, home to the London Corinthians boat club, on the right, there. It hosted BBC Breakfast News parties in the past, in the carefree days before they sent everyone packing to Salford. Salford!
Your route winds under a building outcrop then past the Old Ship pub on your right, home of Young's bitters, guest ales, pleasant Sunday lunches and occasional meetings of the ex-BBC hacks refreshments club.
Soon enough you cut a few yards inland to run past the front of a terrace of riverside cottages on your left. A couple of blue plaques reveal that a humourist you've never heard of used to live in one of them.
Ponder that as you jog west past some of the finest riverfront houses in London. This time of year House Martins light up the sky on their way to and from their nests under the eaves. Imagine how much you'd have to earn to buy one of these mansions, complete with a private Thames-side garden across the road, and run away from the thought as you head left back to the river and Chiswick Pier.
There's a lifeboat station just ahead in case you find yourself in the Thames after mulling over those house prices, and a pizza restaurant with a fabulous conservatory that I've often run past but never gone in. One day.
A few metres later the houses run out and you're jogging on a leafy footpath with Chiswick Bandstand looming. Never seen a band on it. A good Boat Race landmark, though. And your next landmark is a boathouse with its sloping launch strip. Careful, here - those eight-man boats emerge head-high on your right from nowhere.
Up a small flight of concrete steps then avoid Barnes Bridge and turn right to run parallel to the railway embankment on your left towards the extra-posh Chiswick Racquets Club on your right. I jogged past an expensively-dressed woman on her way to the tennis courts smoking a fag this morning. What's she thinking?
First on the left takes you onto a single carriageway under a railway bridge. You may have to dodge some impatient 4x4s here before returning to the verge heading towards the Thames Tradesman's boat club. Nip through their car park and you're back on the riverbank.
This is the nicest stretch of the whole route. It's like running through a country meadow with the river on your left and fragrant, waist-high wild flowers on your right. You'll wish the path never ends but it does, at another boat house at the foot of majestic Chiswick Bridge. This is the base of the elite Tideway Scullers. Current members include Alan Campbell, the Ulsterman who won the silver medal in the men's single sculls at the World Rowing Cup at Eton Dorney this weekend. Here he is on his row of honour:
Jog up the steps of the bridge and cross the river. Jog down again on you're on your way back. That's The Ship on your right, there, another good place for an al fresco Sunday lunch overlooking the swarms of afternoon rowers. And that's the big old Budweiser brewery next to the cobbles. Horrible beer but keeps a lot of people in work. Don't knock it.
More cobbles test the ankles and knees until you get to The White Hart. Yet another good place to sit under a parasol with a pint of Young's and watch the world go by. Not today, though. On you go along the muddy bit under Barnes Bridge and on to the pavement. Fabulously big views of the sweeping bend of the river, here. Look out for more House Martins gathering mud for their nests on the edge.
The Thames at Barnes
Before you know it you're back on the trail, the river hidden by the trees on your left, the air full of birdsong from the Leg of Mutton nature reserve on your right. Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Great Tit, Willow Warbler - they're all fighting to be heard but not seen. Enjoy the summer warblers while you dodge the puddles - it's nearly always a bit damp on this stretch.
The lush scenery stays the same until you reach Westminster School boat club on the right. The only other landmark is a balloon-strewn shrine to some poor soul who presumably didn't make it out of the river one day.
A couple of strides letter and the glorious green and gold Hammersmith Bridge looms large in front of you again. Jog over, being prepared to slow down for fellow runners and pedestrians on the narrow, rickety walkway, and you've nearly made it. Officially you need to jog past the Dove again to make it 10k. Or you could sack it off and pop in the Blue Anchor for one instead.
There were seven Rose-ringed Parakeets in my Shepherd's Bush back garden when I opened the curtains at 6.30am today.
Three were fighting for space on one of the two sunflower-seed feeders. The others were perched in the still-leafless fig tree that overlooks them.
At this time of year we usually see them before we hear them: sunrise is around 6.35am and it's still chilly enough to have the windows closed all night.
But give it a month and their unmistakeable, ear-piercing kyik! kyik! squawking will be waking up everyone with a half-open bedroom window by first light at 5.30 in the morning.
It's around then that I stop filling up the bird feeders. I actually quite like the noise myself - it's part of the west London soundscape and I'd much rather be woken early by a Himalayan parrot than Farming Today on Radio Four.
But the elderly next-door-neighbour isn't as keen. He's too neighbourly to make an issue of it but the tinfoil things he hangs from the branches of his fig tree and the way he shoos-off the birds whenever he sees them are a bit of a giveaway.
He's not the only one who'd rather they weren't there. Fifteen months ago Natural England made it legal to shoot parakeets and destroy their nests and eggs without a licence if the landowner has a good reason, such as crop or habitat destruction.
Supporters of the permission-to-cull legislation say the incomers are also a threat to our native garden birds, especially House Sparrows which have all but vanished from parts of north and east London.
But in my bit of W12, we've got a thriving population of chattering sparrows in the inaccessible Dog Rose bushes at the back of the garden and they regularly scrap with their more glamorous rivals for a perch on the feeders.
Great Spotted Woodpeckers are also said to be under threat because the parakeets use the same sort of tree holes they favour for their nests.
But in the last three years, woodpeckers have been regular visitors to the hanging peanut feeder on the other side of our garden. They come more often, not less.
All anecdotal, of course, but I'm very fond of the parakeets. Visitors are amazed the first time they see them in the garden and they certainly liven up summer evenings when squawking, fast-flying flocks of 30 or more sweep over the rooftops before settling down to roost at Wormwood Scrubs.
And given the choice between their noisiness and the sound of excited toddlers bouncing on and falling off trampolines all weekend - boing, boing, waahh! - it's a no-brainer.
Today, we announce a new code of behaviour for London's cyclists.
Today, we make a new promise to the motorists and pedestrians with whom we grudgingly share the roads and pavements of our proud capital city.
We have a new weapon in the fractious Us and Them commuter race.
It is free and foolproof.
And it will help us achieve a free-wheeling goal as revealing as our lycra shorts.
Never.
Stop.
Ever.
Our new methods will be as high-vis as our orange Hump backpacks.
We will cycle in packs in front of double deckers in bus lanes during rush hour.
We will pedal in the slow lane of the Great West Road when there is an empty, newly-resurfaced cycle lane next to us.
We will flick fingers at the dimwitted motorists who fail to read our minds at roundabouts.
And we will fearlessly await the moment when we risk limb loss while weaving down Chiswick High Road because we have a new loaded gun to point at the demented drivers doing their damnedest to kill us.
