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Tag: exercise

Running Free

After health problems stopped me running for almost two years, I decided to start up again. My first forays out onto the open road (or gravel track) were tentative to say the least. All I could manage to begin with were short bursts of a few minutes, follwed by a period of walking to recover. My chest burned the whole…

Insomnia

At three o’clock in the morning, I had a revelation. Christopher Hitchens was wrong. It isn’t religion that poisons everything. It’s thinking. Lying awake in the blanket silence, the rest of the household sleeping, the mind tends to go into overdrive. Your entire life becomes the subject for debate, except there’s no-one around to field the questions. I’ve suffered from insomnia for short…

Fitness for the faint-hearted

The general population can be divided, roughly, into three categories: the fit, the unfit and the soon to stop breathing. Given that most of us fall into the last two, I thought it prudent to ask why. Many centuries ago we were a labour intensive society. Men ploughed fields and gathered crops. Women baked bread and swept the hearth, constantly on…