Things I learned this weekend (exercise edition)


?Not every Daniel Craig Bond film is a triumph. Oh, but why did it have to be such a long, cold disappointment?

There’s a marathon in July in Nova Scotia. So if I get myself into gear, I could combine the yearly trip home with running a very long way, wearing unattractive shorts. Everyone is a winner.

Be wary when using your child as a training aid. On Saturday morning while at Ronin, I realised I hadn’t exercised my arms much. So I started using Butterball Destroyer as a convenient 4-5 kilogram weight for overhead presses. Until she spat up into my face on about the tenth rep. Never keep your mouth wide open while weightlifting, it turns out.

I’m not the fastest cyclist in Singapore. This should have been abundantly obvious, but even riding back from photographing this weekend’s Parkrun, with a heavy SLR in my backpack and a heavier mountain bike, I couldn’t stop myself chasing after cyclists on sensible equipment. For twenty glorious seconds or so I was drafting somebody. Well, I was drafting a five-foot tall lady on a road bike, which surprisingly did give me a lot of aerodynamic assistance. Then she got bored and cycled off into the distance. I also discovered that I should have pumped up my rear shock – there’s no pressure in it so if I get out of the saddle and start pedalling, the bike blows through all its travel and makes horrible noises as bits of the frame clank together.

I can’t always persuade my child that running is fun. Perhaps she was just too tired, but when I got La Serpiente into the running stroller she was super excited, but by the time we got down to the ground floor she was a caterwauling mess. Rather than reinforce in her the idea that running is unpleasant, I acquiesced to her demands to go home, and so we didn’t get our father-and-daughter time, bonding over travelling together slightly too fast over a pedestrian walkway. Ah well.

Talk of diets and nutrition invariably provoke argument in our household. Contemplating the Whole30 diet (to see if I can wean myself off too much carbohydrate, mostly). This ended up with my wife and I not talking to each other on Sunday afternoon. (Then again, we were both asleep for an hour, so it wasn’t silence for half the day…)

Running around The Pinnacle is boring.. Really, really boring. I managed 20 minutes today, listening to Carly Rae Jepsen and running too fast. I need to get some more imaginative running routes or I’ll go stir crazy. However, it seems like every good trail near the flat is getting dug up now or in the near future, so that doesn’t bode well for my sanity.


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