I’ve been getting bored again recently. I’ve had to put an awful lot of hours into my job for the last couple of months to ensure that the students will be as prepared as possible for an upcoming exam, and because I’m organising two modules at once. Consequently I’ve had neither time nor appetite for my usual sport (fishing) as I’d rather be spending time with Kim and Jack in the few hours when I’m not working. I think I’m also missing some of those fun brain chemicals now that summer is here and I’m not pushing my body to do some grueling task that it hasn’t done before.
The problems that stopped me running seem to be a little less of a problem now, after using some stretching exercises prescribed to me by a friend (probably tight tibialis posterior and flexor hallucis longus muscles if you must know). So maybe it’s time to get running again. I’ve run for most of my life and I enjoy running. I run even when I’m focussed on completely unrelated sports, and I used to run to work and back (4 miles each way) almost every day when I was uber-fit in Cardiff. I just like to go running. I run all year round, usually for no more reason that that it feels good. There are the added benefits of staying thin and fit, which I also get from cycling to work and back.
I’ve set up an online account with the Polar Personal Trainer for fun, and also because I’m a biological scientist and I love monitoring how my body changes in response to exercise. I’ll probably get a new heart rate monitor so I can get geeky and make graphs, but there’s not a lot of software available to do it quite how I want to. This online solution lets me access my training logs from anywhere. I’ve been looking to see how I might publish training data as part of my blog, but nobody wants to convert data from heart rate monitors into a useable standardised format (like CSV or XML), so that might prove difficult.
So time for new running shoes, time to persevere with the stretches, time to hit the road, and to discover my new surroundings in Swansea. Maybe I should lengthen my cycle route home once in a while too…
