Gym, gym, mechanic (easy week post sportive and before the resumption of running?)

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  Methuselah (or Enoch), RIP

I took Monday off after the sportive on Sunday – I didn’t fancy getting up early and there was the real prospect of some aches and pains (which, happily, didn’t materialise – my knee was happy too).

Back to the gym on Tuesday for an hour – again the only person in there. I don’t see how they will be able to continue unless they are busy at other times of the day or have a lot of people who are still paying for memberships but simply not turning up.

Wednesday was foul – cold and wet so I lacked motivation to exercise but I got to the gym again on Thursday morning with a friend (we were the only two in there), for another bitterly cold hour.

Another session manning the charity’s bike shop with my son on Friday morning with two more bike sales. I also spent time on sorting out some wheel bearings and a pedal that was shedding ball bearings as you rode. I appear to have become Bearings Man – given my lack of skill in the area, the other volunteers must be terrible at them.

We entertained (outside) on Friday night and again on Saturday lunchtime (garden gazebo to the fore as it’s not been getting beyond about 11℃ (or 52℉). I mowed on Sunday but couldn’t get motivated to get on the turbo. Next week I think I owe myself some better exercise sessions.

Still no running (just over 3 weeks now) as I follow good advice from the Olderrunner and wait until I feel the knee is better … and then wait another week.

	Target Plan	My Actual
Week 7: Miles (Km)	22 (35)
‘Running’ Totals	109.5 (175)	120 (193)

Week 7, Ultra Marathon training (with rounding)

Interesting stuff this week

1. African wise words: Life is like a mud pot; handle with utmost care

2. BBC News website: Kanye West’s Yeezy trainers sell for record

A pair of shoes designed and worn by the musician Kanye West have sold for $1.8m (£1.3m) at auction – the highest amount ever paid for trainers. The Nike Air Yeezy 1 Prototypes beat the previous record, which was held by a pair of Nike Air Jordan 1s that sold for $615,000 last year.

What?

3. BBC News website: Oscars 2021 – Audiences turn off

The number of people watching the Oscars dropped to an all-time low on Sunday, overnight figures reveal. The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg described it as ‘in some ways, a trainwreck’.

Seems appropriate as IMDb lists 31 films with trainwrecks

4. BBC News website: ‘More than a million Moroccans arrested’ for Covid breaches

Moroccan media report that more than 1.5 million Moroccans have been arrested in the last nine months for not respecting the country’s Covid-19 precautionary measures – about 4% of the population.

This translates to a rate of more than 5,700 people arrested every day during that time.

Now that’s Covid non-compliance on an industrial scale

5. BBC News website: Ex-leader accused of jumping vaccine queue tests positive

Peru’s former president has tested positive for Corona virus just days after he was banned from public office for allegedly jumping the queue to receive the vaccine.

He said he was a volunteer in a trial, but the university hosting it said he asked to be vaccinated. The scandal broke in February and hundreds of other civil servants and public officials have also been implicated.

Only 2.5% of Peruvians have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine and the country is going through a second wave, registering record numbers of cases and deaths in recent weeks.

6. As a sad but slightly trivial bit of news, we lost our two last chickens. No sign of how anything got into the run (which has been secure for many years) – but something did. Although we hadn’t given names to any chickens for many years, these last two were often referred to as Methuselah and Enoch due to their old ages. According to the Bible, Methuselah lived to 969 and his father, Enoch, lived to 365 before he was ‘taken by God’ which some traditions interpret as him not having died.

First time chicken-less for something like 16 years. Ahh