One week down and my every other day visits to the gym continue. Joshua loves it and asks to go every day as kind Perry, the stalwart of the local Tories and the gym manager, allows him to watch Thomas The Tank Engine on the screens while I slog away at the treadmill.
I am making steady progress, yesterday managing a new (middle age) personal best of 3.75 kilometres in half an hour. Predictably my daughter sneers. She says that she can do 1500 metres in five minutes so reckons she would take 15 minutes to run as far as I manage in half an hour. I do not doubt her. Kindly, she concedes that I am quite old and perhaps a little bit passed my sporting peak. Oh how gracious.
I cannot remember how fast I was at my peak which was at the age of 32 when I’d play rugby on a Saturday for London Irish amateurs, train at Sunbury once in the week and work out at the gym three days a week. I know that I could, without collapsing, manage to run six miles in an hour so that works out at 4.8 kilometres in half an hour. I really cannot see myself getting anywhere near that again but, for now, my target is 4 kilometres in half an hour. If I get there we will take it from there.
It is all good for the type 2 diabetes. Today is not a gym day, instead a modest walk in the rain to see the goat at the local fake farm is on the cards.