Taking it easy

I was working late last night on some frustrating things, so instead of getting up early this morning for a run, I took another half hour of dozing and then got up. This was a bad thing; I spent the day feeling slightly sluggish, although that might be because of the cold, cold, cold air conditioning. Honestly, it's chilly enough now that HP Lovecraft would find it more frightening than the Antarctic.

Perhaps because it's so cold, I don't drink very much water. In Bellevue, which wasn't even hot, I was chugging back cans of Talking Rain constantly, which meant every half hour I was back in the lavatory, wondering if it's possible for your kidneys to be overused. In Singapore, by comparison, I might drink a teacup of water every day, and so by four in the afternoon I feel dreadful.

That meant that going for a run today was a bit of a gamble; would I keel over, or be sick in a bin, or just slump by the side of the road and expire? Evidently I survived to write this; I'm baffled as to why I'm going so much quicker than before Bellevue. Not quite enough to get me up the hills on Wednesday like I wanted, but quick enough to make me feel confident about tomorrow's hard run. Or, alternatively, I'll be burned out and tomorrow just a shadow of myself.

Reading Jeremy Paxman's book on the British Empire, I learned that Baden-Powell may be the person who started the idea that when exercising you should breathe through your nose and not your mouth. Partly for cleanliness, supposedly, partly to prevent snoring, although if you're snoring while out jogging, I think you have other problems. I don't think breathing through your nose is brilliant advice for anyone doing hard exercise if they're not in polar conditions (like, say, my office). So Baden-Powell's advice to all the millions of Boy Scouts strikes me as a bit misguided.

Then again, he was vehemently opposed to masturbation, and I think you have to admit it's hard to run a world record 100 metre time while knocking one out. Call it a draw, perhaps?