15 minutes to midnight, just after i put the finishing touch to the power-point slides for use in tomorrow's lesson, that mad streak caught hold of me, that unexplainable desire to punish myself, drench myself in sweat, to feel alive with my heart pounding madly inside of its cavity behind my lungs, to have my body beg me to stop, and have my my willpower ultimately endure, seeing me through to the end. I slipped on my running shoes and went out for a 15 minute run across and around my estate, waking up all the sleeping cats and then like the dessert to a satisfying meal, I ran up the stairs 21 storeys to the top of the block with the view of the sea and at the end of it I was wheezing like a gazelle who had just escaped a cheetah. That mad mad streak of masochism.