Running World Cup

I had another quick run around the blocks today, and it got entered into the running for the Running World Cup, which I think I mentioned here.

I haven’t had a lot to do with it really, but SA is top of the pile in this early qualifying round:

Some surprising entries there, with Tunisia and Romania looking like they’re going to finish high up on the leaderboard. Who knew.? Who even cared?

Incidentally, it looks like the top 16 countries qualify for the next stage (not sure what that involves yet, probably more running) and with 2 days to go, Ireland have been knocked out of contention for the moment by Bangladesh, of all places.

But clearly the main threat to SA is the Smaller European Nations, who have ganged together to make one Larger European Nation. I’m not sure is this is cheating or not, but you’ve have to argue that it’s probably very difficult to run very far in one Small European Nation because you’ll simply run (NPI) out of Small European Nation to run in. So maybe it’s fair enough.

I have a couple of days to add another run to my tally, but I have no intentions of doing so.

I’ll keep you up to date with whatever happens next. (It might not be anything.)

Exercise news

It’s going to be a post full of mixed feelings and news. Highs and lows. Plusses and minussessesus. Pros and cons.

I’m getting there. Back into gym, back into hitting my weekly exercise goals, back into feeling a bit more fit and healthy. If I were twenty years younger, putting this in much effort and doing this much exercise, I’d be a model of abs, sinew and one big bicep by now. But I’m not that age anymore, and it all take so much longer to get back into shape.

Add to that my sudden weaknesses around beer and big baguettes for lunch, and you’ll see why things could be going more quickly than they actually are. I’m going to switch on my will power for a while and see if I can improve the situation. God only knows where I’d be if I wasn’t getting to gym most days.

Augustus Gloop.

And there’s more. I’m playing some friendly football on Sunday in an attempt to get myself a bit more match-fit (hopefully) ahead of a return to the real thing towards the end of next month. The bad news about this is that it’s brought back memories of that Sunday morning friendly session. I’m going to be much more sensible this time around though: if it gets bad (and at the moment it’s forecast to be 28ºC in the shade, which is manageable), I’m going to stop, instead of trying to die. It’ll be my first kick of a ball in three months. I’m looking forward to it, albeit with a little trepidation.

Next week brings with it the start of the Running World Cup – a thing that I’m doing because I would be exercising anyway, so why not have some fun with it? My knee is doing ok on the treadmill, so why wouldn’t it do ok on the road? I’ll test it on the football pitch over the weekend and see if it survives that.

The future is bright: as long as I can start eating a bit more healthily and drinking a bit less. Sadly, neither of those things is going to happen this evening, thanks to a visit to the local curry house with the Molton Brown boys.

But who knows what tomorrow may bring?