page after page

It seems that out of every hobby, past-time, or leisurely pursuit, reading is the one that has endured the longest, and has been the most consistent in my life. I can hardly remember a time in my life when I was not in the middle of one novel or another (except, of course, those brief lulls between books when I need time to recover from book hangovers).

Running probably comes a close second, although I’ve been running less these days — mostly because this summer we’ve had a lot of days when it was too hot, or too rainy. Plus I’ve been doing several late finishes at work, and then week-ends are busy with other things. But overall, since childhood (maybe mid-primary school some time) I’ve always enjoyed running, and I ran pretty consistently year after year.

Now I’ve gotten back into cycling more. This week I cycled to work twice (yesterday and the day before), and surprisingly my legs aren’t quite as sore as I feared they’d be. The thing with cycling is that although I had a bike when I was a kid, and thoroughly enjoyed cycling whenever I got the chance, there’s a huge interval in my life when I didn’t cycle at all. I think I just outgrew my bicycle around high school time, and never got a new one until after uni (?)

I’m not really sure what happened there. Probably it was just easier and cheaper to run. I still think that running has a lot of advantages over cycling (like needing less gear, not needing as much preparation, having more freedom with where you go, etc, etc) but unfortunately it’s not feasible to run to and from work on a regular basis (not from where I currently live anyway)

Another thing that has dropped in and out of my life is writing. Take this blog for example: I used to write a lot more frequently here, but it has become less of a priority in recent months. I used to also write more stories and poems and other creative things, but I feel less compelled to write these days. I do miss it a bit, I guess, which is why I’m here again, but I’m not really sure where my writing will go from here.

So this was basically my train of thought the other night, when I went for a pre-dinner walk. And it was then that I realised that reading was the one true constant in my life — the one habit I cannot (and don’t intend to) stop.

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hold your breath

A few years ago, I drafted a blog post about how I sometimes hold my breath when I walk past bins or smokers or people who, for one reason or another, look like they might smell. I never finished writing this post, and never published it because I thought it was too weird. 

(But I don’t mean to be judgemental. Sometimes it’s obvious that someone has just been to the gym, or maybe I’m out running, and there are other sweaty people out running. And it’s not always body odour — sometimes people who exercise wear too much deodorant.)

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine shared an article that detailed the findings of a Belgian study on the kinetics of exhaled air/vapour during exercise. Specifically, the study looked at walking, running and cycling; and the aim was to determine whether or not it was safe to walk/run/cycle behind or beside someone, with a view to minimising transmission of airborne viruses.

As it turns out, you probably want to stay at least five metres away from other runners, and stay further away from other cyclists, if that is your exercise of choice. 

Recently, I’ve noticed that I hold my breath more and more when I walk past people — perfectly normal-looking people with no suggestion of body odour or excessive fragrance usage, and not even a cigarette in hand.

The other day, I happened to walk past a man in the street, and he turned his face away from me as we passed each other. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, and perhaps he happened to see something interesting across the road, but maybe he was holding his breath too.

Who’s the weird one now, hey?

shaping up

In the last two weeks I wrote about my reading and study goals for the year and beyond. This week I’m looking at health and fitness. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that physical activity is good for one’s intellect and memory as well, so it’s all connected, really, and it would be remiss of me to not set some goals here too.

I actually wrote this post in mid-January, and scheduled it to be published almost three weeks later, so hopefully I’ve made more progress, or otherwise this will help serve as a reminder to myself about what I’m supposed to be doing!

as I ran

Last night I went for a run. As I started running, I calculated how many hours I’d worked this past week: full days from Monday through to Saturday, a bit extra here, a bit less there – all up about 54 hours. I redid the maths a couple of times in case I missed a half-hour somewhere. No, 54 is right.

Strange, I thought, that after 54 hours of work, all I wanted to do was go for a run. 

let’s catch up …maybe

These last few weeks have been pretty hectic. Everything’s a bit of a blur. I’ve been doing a lot of overtime at work because of this new arrangement in place involving other hospitals. (Can’t say too much, of course, because of privacy reasons or whatever.) I just worked six consecutive days – some of which were 11-12 hour days – and I am quite exhausted, but also not. I think I’ve just been running on adrenaline all week because I only had a total of maybe 3 cups of coffee and one cup of tea the whole week (and the most recent two beverages were probably unnecessary anyway).

Well, maybe we’ll call it adrenaline and fear/panic. There have been many times these last few weeks when I’ve felt like I was working as if my life depended on it. It’s like a fear of death (i.e. consequences) or fear of God (i.e. management – except I’m not really afraid of management; they’ve been very supportive).

race day

Yesterday was the annual Bridge to Brisbane fun run and, my goodness, it was a very interesting day! It had been a few years since I last participated, but my workplace entered a team, so I was pretty keen to be a part of it. Unfortunately, I got a cold last week, so I was still recovering from it yesterday (still have a bit of residual cough now), so I was not expecting to have a good result, but we’ll get to that later. I want to go over the whole morning. (Yes, there may quite possibly be a lot of menial details in this post, but I want to document as much as possible.)