In which I look both forwards and backwards.
2 years of COVID-19 on GOV.UK
I'm late to post about this, but GOV.UK wrote up a really good article a while back on the work done during coronavirus (which I was partly involved with). It's a good account of what happened and an interesting insight into the pressures and effort involved.
What's most interesting is that even though this is an extra long post there is of course far more detail that is not included. A lot of people I know worked very hard and struggled a great deal, producing exceptional work. I have tremendous respect for them.
Keeping fit
Back in the summer I started the Coach to 5K app. Despite a few setbacks (illness followed by an unrelated injury that meant I repeated the runs in week 3 four times) I've since completed the programme and really enjoyed it.
I'm not a runner. It's never really appealed. I used to rely on my cycling commute to maintain a reasonable level of fitness, but I've been working from home a lot more since COVID began. Lacking a better option for any kind of physical exercise, I decided to give running a go. Here's a few things that have particularly helped:
- decent running shoes (and running socks, which I didn't know were a thing)
- wireless headphones (I use some kindly donated in-ear buds, which have yet to fall out)
- a playlist of music to run to
- a route to run that is as flat as possible
- set times during the week to run
The programme focusses on time and not distance. You start by doing short stretches of running followed by a few minutes of walking, to build endurance. The ultimate aim is to run for 30 minutes without stopping, but I was surprised to reach a distance of 5K before that point (sometime around week 8).
The hard bit was keeping going after the programme finished, particularly as autumn set in with dropping temperatures and disappearing daylight (I was running at 6am but I've now switched to lunchtimes). It's been particularly hard if I've missed even a week without running - my fitness drops really quickly.
Improving my time for a 5K has been a good motivator, but right now I'm trying to make my pace more consistent - not just fast at the start and slow at the end. Turns out that running is quite a complex thing.
And finally, some jokes
I thought of another joke the other day. Want to hear it?
- What do you call a fish with wheels?
- A carp.
Okay, that was pretty bad. I'm sorry. I thought of this next one, genuinely, in my sleep. I had a dream where I had to think of a joke, and this was what I came up with.
- Did you hear about the man who kidnapped Shakespeare from a pub?
- He got bard.
Since that did come to me in a dream it's entirely possible it's not an original joke and I've merely recycled it, in which case I apologise to the original author.