The Way

London 1997 At the Excel Centre that became the Nightingale Hospital for the Covid 19 days

Every day still seems like Sunday to me and the alternate pattern of, one day drive out to run in the woods or the other day of stay indoors and turbo train as the main set, make it even harder to know what day it is. That is because we get four runs in one week and three turbo training days and then switch around. The main run doesn’t necessarily come on Sunday as it always used to. A Sunday run only comes once in a fortnight now and it may well not be the biggest or most important run of the week any more. The important point for me though is that on the alternate days we go out into the countryside, no matter which of our runs we do and those are the best days by far when we get a couple of hours with the outside world empty and all to ourselves, the birds and the deer.

There does not seem to be much reason to go out on our bikes, well not to me anyway.  The added nightmare currently is that the traffic around here is worst than ever with all the road works for the new main road into town and so driving even further to ride is not good use of time unless it seems that some hills would help.

With every event cancelled or postponed until next year the point of the high level of training is not the next race any more because that is a very distant place to focus on. So the reason to keep training is holding the health and fitness level for ourselves and whatever else life may throw at us. It keeps us safe from the unruly young, who are ignoring all guidance and endangering their elders. Their lives must mean less to them than our lives mean to us. If the only important thing worth looking forward to is to get into a bar or a beach and get drunk no matter the risk. Their lives seem to have little or no aim, purpose or direction not to mention goals, achievement or ambition.

At this very moment my husband is upstairs in our shared work room; office to him and sewing and ironing room to me. He is busy making the point that life will eventually go on, in something vaguely resembling the lines it did before the dreaded diseased days crept in. He is planning places to stay for a triple race holiday in early summer next year. However he is also making allowances for how life will have changed and also how this time in our lives has changed us. We are more cautious it’s true. We will stay in apartments and not hotels. We will only eat food prepared and cooked ourselves; we do not trust the hygiene levels of others.

On TV this week we have totally lost the plot and have been watching Alex Ryder. I can’t recommend it, although it is an interesting idea because it’s all a bit teeny for me and I presume that it is aimed at teens and the young adults. It was a mistake to start it. So I don’t even think we will make it to the end. It also seems like a very poor mans version of The Institute by Stephen King which was excellent.

We are still listening to Kindred by Octavia Butler on audible over the dinner period or any other sit down times with a cup of coffee. It will take us a while to get through it at that rate but it is very good indeed and is an excellent study of life in the dark days of slavery in the USA as well as the ‘What If’ side it has to it. Brilliantly told and beautifully read.

This morning’s training involved the same ballet workout that we have found to be beneficial in a number of ways and we both get totally absorbed within it and know we have had a workout at the end. After that we sat on our Turbo’s for a gentle spinning session and were surprised yet again when to fill the time, Steve found another episode of Frasier that we had not seen; which is hard to believe since we watched it for years and it’s still funny. Then episode 13 of The West Wing carried us through the time scale seamlessly.