Turbo, run, run, run, turbo, run – and a small milestone (kilometrestone?)

Another thing about wearing the Vapour Glove minimalist shoes – my feet are noticeably chillier in cold weather

I guess there is a reasonably fine line between exercising hard and constructively – and over-doing it and risking injury. I also guess that the line is drawn rather more conservatively for us over 65s.

Underlining that, after a tougher than usual week, my right Achilles and left knee were a little unhappy on Monday and didn’t feel motivated to get out for a run. I did get on the turbo trainer in the early evening – 22.08km in 45 minutes @ 29.44kph (13.72miles @ 18.3mph).

My wife and I ran one of our stock routes on Tuesday, 7km (4.34miles) – and we ran a shorter route on Wednesday, although I added a bit on to make 9.22km (5.7 miles).

We ran again on Thursday – I did laps of the old hill fort for a total of 10.7km (6.65 miles). The run saw a (very small) milestone as I passed 1000 running kilometres for 2020 (taking a little over 100 hours and with just over 10km of ascent).

Miles and kilometres are slightly strange bedfellows here, but a milestone of 621 miles doesn’t really work – and I’m not sure about having a kilometrestone.

Thursday’s run (which also saw the retirement of my favourite running shoes) made it 6 runs and 2 turbo sessions in the previous 8 days so I took Friday off exercise. Strangely, I really wanted to go for a run or get on the turbo but managed to hold firm against that.

Happily, the England v Ireland rugby watch was on terrestrial TV on Saturday so I went for the hour on the turbo watching it, again with a ’15 second sprint per point scored’ commitment. They were kind to me – 12-0 to England at half time – so an hour for just 29.7km (about 18.5 miles).

Sunday morning was cold but, having self-diagnosed as an under-pronator (supinator) who should have well cushioned shoes, I ignored the science, had a cup of coffee and took my minimalist shoes for a very enjoyable 10.2km (6.3 miles) run at 5:34/km, to finish the week.

Only a couple of weeks into the second lockdown and I’m missing the gym. Not only is lifting heavy bits of metal enjoyable in itself, but it adds welcome variety in the form of a third string to the run/cycle bow. I’ve also realised that I’ve got into the habit of stretching at the end of gym sessions – a habit I’ve not developed after any other exercise. I must remember to stretch more (or, indeed, at all).

One trivial outcome of the lockdown is that I have had a very easy duty as route-setter for the cycling club. My first of a four week stint was the last Saturday before the lockdown – but we won’t set routes now to avoid any suggestion that we are encouraging group riding. Happily, we have built a very large on-line library of rides for all three of the groups we run and we simply encourage people to pick their own, if they do want to ride.

Interesting stuff this week

1. African wise words: The frog wanting to be as large as the elephant ended up bursting

2. The world’s gone mad: Our local supermarket has ‘Wild Bird Suet Balls’ for sale. The back of the packet says ‘Allergy advice – may contain peanuts’.

Do they think people are going to eat them, or are they worried about wild birds with nut allergies (and if so, how are the birds going to read the warning anyway?)

3. BBC News Website: The German government praises the nation’s couch potatoes as the country battles a second wave of coronavirus

The first advert depicts an elderly man looking back on the winter of 2020.

“The fate of this country lay in our hands,” he says (in German!). “So, we mustered all our courage and did what was expected of us, the only right thing. We did nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

There is a funny youtube video by British comedian Mitch Benn with a song in a similar vein but with rather more robust language to replace ‘absolutely nothing’.

4. BBC News Website: New Zealand crowns chubby cute parrot bird of the year

New Zealand has voted the kakapo its Bird of the Year. Only a complex election system allowed the big flightless parrot to triumph over its closest rival, the Antipodean albatross.

There were allegations of election rigging (sound familiar?) when hundreds of votes came from a single IP address. But in the end, the kakapo won, marking the second time New Zealanders crowned the chubby parrot their number one bird.

Ahhh