Pains and Joys

There are several things I’m trying to “achieve” these days. And for many of these things I have had serious doubts about whether they’re achievable (not whether they are in theory, but in my own book). But their importance keeps hitting home, so I can’t quite ignore them.

The first thing is going running. I know the many benefits of it: health (especially when one contemplates the real possibility that one is aging, albeit slowly), de-stressing, and the feel-good-afterwards aspect of it. But I hate it. I hate the sweating, the pain (!), the stitches, the you-will-never-get-very-far sort of mindset I get into as soon as I start running, the head spinning - basically the price one pays for exercising when one is unfit.

For exercise, I prefer playing tennis – it is actually fun, interactive and sociable. There’s excitement and variation as opposed to repetition and monotony. I think we’ll get into our tennis again soon, after we retrieve our racquets from Rob’s parents’ in London. But at my level of skill, I don’t think playing tennis itself will get me fit or healthy, as most of the time at the end of the first 30 minutes of playing I would normally be panting like crazy, and be reminded again that I need to exercise more.

So Rob and I have started running a bit – my kind husband jogs with me all the way from where we’re house sitting (on Caine Road in Central, Hong Kong) to May Road, a route which involves almost constantly running up steep roads (I usually run the first stretch, and then walk-run the others). At 33 degrees Celsius, perhaps that’s another reason why running feels even more strenuous. Rob keeps telling me that it will get better - that the more I run the easier I will find – say after one month.

One month! That’s a long time. I’m not sure if I can do it, even though each time after I’ve done it I feel good and motivated to go running again, at least before my lazier self starts to throw me a thousand excuses.

The second “thing I am trying to achieve”, I suspect, a common issue for many, is taking a proper break. I’ll write about that tomorrow.