14 January 2019 25,631 steps 30 minutes running weight 78.8kg
The warm, muggy weather continues. I wanted to get a run of an hour in today, but it was so hot and I so tired that I eventually settled on thirty minutes as a reasonable compromise. But I did manage a stack of walking as well which is encouraging.
Other than that, there’s not too much to report. Ah! Except, of course, for the ongoing battle with the caterpillars which is seemingly in its final stages now, with just a few stragglers to hunt down and destroy. We’re on the alert instead for the emerging moths from the larvae that we’ve missed and which are worryingly absent thus far. I fear I’ll wake one morning and find the house full of them. It’s all very high tension stuff here, as you can imagine. Hitchcock would have a field day with all this: the struggling shift-working wanna-be runner, the infernal heat and the unstoppable menace of the invasion of the tiger moths. With a score by Bernard Herrmann, of course.
In drama of another kind, the Australian Open tennis championship started today, the standout story being the ousting of Andy Murray in the opening round in five sets by the Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut. Murray had already indicated the pain from his seriously injured hip was now so bad that the Australian Open could well be his final appearance on the tour. Clearly he was in pain throughout the match, but in his usual style battled on. It’s sad to see a champion forced out by injury, and especially tragic to see him denied the chance to win his first Australian Open, a tournament he’s been runner-up in no less than five times.
Regardless of what happens next (he says major surgery is now his only option, with no guarantees of any success), his inspiration will remain. A true champion.
January 2019 ... here we go again!
