I don't really feel like work today, to be honest. At least it will be over in a couple of hours.

Yesterday was a rather windy day. Bins strewn across the road, the previous day's news scattered and tossed about, overturned pots... that kind of a wind. It happens here, but not often, so it's still an unusual sight. I had thought about running at the start of the day, but rain, darkness, cold, and a strange ... craving? for ab crunches convinced me to do some minutes on the stepper instead. I chose four exercises for the lower-intensity periods - pressups, calf raises, squats, and crunches, of course - then did two-minutes stints on the stepper, and simply picked two exercises to do in between for about 30 seconds. I ended up spending about 25 minutes at 70-80% MHR. I'm past #29, and the next few ones definitely going to be the harder ones to do. It gets dark here by 3:45pm now, and the only sort of lighting around where I live is street lighting, and I don't really want to be running on pavements, darting around cars, hoping they stop at zebra crossings, or dodging pedestrians. I only like watching the steeplechase!

Some interesting facts I've picked up reading The Lore of Running:

1) Only 20% of the calories expended during exercise goes towards the activity, apparently. The remaining 80% heats up the body.

2) A fluid replacement rate of about 500-700ml per hour is about average. Close to 1000ml per hour will lead to overhydration.

3) Worshippers of the scale (you know who you are), if you exercised for an hour and didn't drink at all to hydrate you'd lose about 2-4 pounds. This loss is easily recouped after you drink. Forget the scale, that's what I say!

The class music teacher at one of my Friday schools had a really tough day. 2 classes of screaming, misbehaving 12 year olds, messing about, doing little work, shouting, tearing down posters, fighting, messing about on keyboards, talking back... I couldn't help but think, "People fought in the great wars ... FOR THIS?"