Another early morning run: not successful. I woke at 5.30 and lay there in a fog. I was just a semi-detached spectator as a fight broke out between Sleep and Run. Five minutes later I was sitting on the stairs, wearily tying the laces of my Brooks, having accepted the inevitable.
The morning came straight from the Running Paradise catalogue. The sun was already bright, but the air remained cool and fresh from the night. No moving cars to be seen or heard or dodged as I set out on my now-familiar 3.67 mile circuit of the local lanes.
After a good start, I began to feel a stitch, then that remote pain in my chest that I used to get during my winter training. I hadn’t done any stretching or warming-up, and I was paying the price. I persisted as best I could but it was tough, and eventually I decided to curtail the run, meaning that I was out for 30 minutes rather than the normal 40. Not a disaster, especially as I was due to visit the gym in the evening.
No bathrobed baldies or cardboard heroes on the train this morning, but I did manage to finish Enduring Love, another great Ian McEwan novel. The opening chapter is sensational, and no one who stands in a bookshop and reads those first few pages of the book can have much hope of leaving the store without it. A very readable novel, though without the true magnificence of McEwan’s Atonement, which I’d read immediately before. Atonement is the finest novel I’ve read in a very long time.
This evening I went for my fitness test at the local gym. Quite an interesting experience. Here’s what I discovered:
| Resting Heart Rate: | 55 bpm | |
| Blood Pressure: | 140/92 | Ideally: 140/85 |
| Body Fat: | 21.9% | Ideally: 14 to 20% |
| Fat Weight: | 44.3 lb | Ideally: 26 to 37 lb |
| Peak Expiratory Flow (VO2): | 64.0 |
I spent a pleasant half hour nattering with the young chap, James, who does the tests. (My neighbour reckons he shaves his legs. Women notice these things…) After our chat he drew up a gym training schedule. At one point he asked me which two pieces of upper-body apparatus I wanted to concentrate on. I wasn’t expecting the question, and came up with the only two whose names I knew: the pec-deck and the lateral machine. "Ah", he said, sounding like an obsequious waiter collecting the wine menu, "An excellent choice!"
After the fitness test I put in the first of my planned 12 sessions and returned home, glowing with smug good health. M had one of her bacon salads waiting. I felt great. I realised that this was a turning point. If I could maintain this kind of regime, I would quickly lose the 15 or so pounds I need to. Ten minutes later, as I leaned on the bar of the local pub, munching peanuts and crisps and enjoying the first of my two pints of bitter, I had cause to reflect on the weaknesses inherent in the human spirit.
I’m beginning to worry about one of the bosses at work. I don’t know if it’s symptomatic of too much World Cup-watching, or something rather… darker, but this week I’ve noticed his tendency to hover behind me, loudly humming Deutschland Uber Alles. What can this mean?
