TAKING THE PEE....

I'm a "lab rat". And so are a few other runners from my club.

We're taking part in an "experiment". Graeme from the club is a "boffin" who works at the sports science centre out at Hampden (where the nations chaps try to play "association soccer"). Anyway him and another bloke are doing tests on a leading brand of sports drinks. Drinks manufactured, I might add, by a company who used to sell medicinal remedies strangely wrapped up in orange cellophane, the sort you only ever drank when you were off school sick... then in the 1980's they gave a wee bottle of the stuff to Daley Thompson, made a wee TV advert and "boom" a whole new market was created!!

Anyway. The experiment involves us drinking prescribed amounts of the prescribed drink at prescribed times (no problem), and then taking our weight daily (no problem), and checking the colour of our piddle up to three times a day.... right.

To assist in this task we've each been given a laminated colour chart that appears to graduate in hue the entire range of dulux yellows (think I can figure out why they felt the need to laminate it).

Thing is the description of this chart is all very boring and clinical. It ranges from 1 - 8.

"1" all the way to "8" ...deary me, not using your imagination much there boffins.

So starting the test today I thought I'd liven things up a bit and rather than a boring number I'd "describe" my colour instead. Less scientific - more fun!

So. This morning I weighed in a few pounds below "tickety boo", my water was plentiful and the colour of a pre-smoking ban, pub ceiling!! There you go they'll get a barrow load of "science" from those findings.

Bet Daley Thompson never had to go through this.

In my defence of the colour. Last night was the first time for a while I've been out running post snow and thaw, so it was quite a quick and strenuous affair ... probably a bit dehydrated.