etc

A member of staff at one of my schools had some sort of chest pains on Friday. Just walking up the stairs, the middle-aged lady was found, by another teacher, on her knees, collapsed in pain, and later described it as if "someone was squeezing my heart - I couldn't breathe". Thankfully help was around, or else she might have just been there on her own. She said she'd thought that was it - that she was going to die there and then - and the only thing that kept her going and fighting for every breath, was the thought of how ridiculous it would seem if she died by the corridor on the last day of school.

Good reminder to keep exercising and being in a fairly good state of health.

I've just been doing short runs of about 30 minutes at 8 mins/mile or under. On Saturday morning after 20 minutes I had to stop for a bit and walk, which was a little disappointing, considering it was 8-minute miles. Yes, I've probably put on weight - which, if you've seen me in real life, isn't that bad a thing. I might have put on five pounds or so. Maybe I will need to reassess my running goals again based on the weight I'm running at. I'd like to be a little heavier - another five or ten pounds of weight would be good, though, particularly if it goes to my jerboa legs. I think at the moment I'm barely scraping 140. I'll have to think, "What weight do I want to be at, and what times would I be happy with?"

There seem to be a lot of races lately. The past three weekends there has been a race every week at a park out of town that we pass by. I browse the sites to see what the race is like, the setup etc, but I don't feel the need to sign up, and pay £XX just for the opportunity to run a short distance with strangers. I'm satisfied to just trot a bit on pavement and pit myself against the watch. Then again, the distances I run are short, seemingly unworthy of the entry free, and I'm slow, so I'm not going through the whole routine of going to a race just to get humiliated.

Gaining some consistency in running is the goal for the next few weeks.