A premier sighting and the consequences of boredom


This morning the road that runs across the northern end of my estate was cordoned off so that the Kim Jong-Un motorcade could go past. Delayed getting to work, I sauntered down to the bridge over the road but that was blocked too. After an interminable wait, the motorcade (six or more motorcycles, then some police vans, a limo with DPRK flags, some more vans, a minivan with two guys with enormous camera lenses, a white minibus with one man sat in the back of about 14 seats, and some more motorcycles) went past, and then I headed to work on my scooter, which took me much longer than it should have, because of the building sites that block a direct route to my office. Oh well, I’m sure in a year or two they’ll have finished whatever it is they’re digging up.

After work today, I went to Boulder Movement for a training session, 45 minutes of climbing and then some pull ups. Apart from warming up on some easy problems, I spent most of the time in one corner of the room, bracing between the two walls and trying to get round a big overhang. This is a different kind of hard to other parts of the wall – to stay in place you have to generate a lot of outwards force to push yourself into the walls you’re braced against, and because of the overhang there’s quite a lot of contortion to do. I managed some things I didn’t expect to (the big difference was when I could get my toes pointed more accurately on the holds) and afterward I did some more finger exercises, then went home to eat cheese sandwiches and watch random fitness challenge videos on YouTube.

These all seem to feature some clowns doing something every day for a month, and then wondering why a lack of periodisation makes them sore. They do 100 pressups every day (not in one go, usually) and as a result a guy moves from being able to do 40 pressups in one go to being able to do 30 in one go. That’s progress of a sort. I guess if he’d kept it up for three more months he’d be able to do 0 in one go.

Inspired by this I tried doing two minutes of hollow body exercises: right now I can do two minutes lying on my back, 30 seconds with my knees bent, 30 seconds with one knee bent and the other leg stretched out straight, then another 30 the other way, and then 30 with both legs extended. This is a progression from the start of the year, when I could do maybe 20 seconds with my legs bent and 20 seconds each with one leg stretched, so as I’ve nothing better to do I’ll try this for the next 30 days and see when I give up, or if I get much better.

The devil makes work for idle abdominal muscles, you see.


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