All posts in January 2020

I noticed today that during my early-morning run, I didn’t think as much about how much I hate running. This is a worrying sign that I might be inching toward becoming A Runner. The possibility rolled around my thoughts as I ran, and after a very short while it became clear that I do still…

I’m not sure what I did with the time for my Tuesday run, but it wasn’t anything unusual; call it 10:45. Wednesday’s was 10:40 in misty 4° weather. This morning felt better (4°, no breeze or rain) for most of the mile, but still came in at 10:45. I think the whole thing is random.

Sunday morning, at 0° and with very thick frost, I ran a 10:57; this morning, -2° with frozen mist and a shoelace that came untied, the timer says I ran 10:10. That can’t be right, of course; even with a refreshed spring in my step after stopping, I was taking small cautious strides over patchy…

Off to a meeting of the leadership Council of the Sodality of Mary, Mother of Priests, at St Mary Magdalene, Munster Square. It’s a bit hard to leave Margaret behind when I’ve spent all week at work, and she only arrived back from the USA Monday morning; on the other hand, most Sodality events take…

Missed yesterday — just slept too late to squeeze in a run in time before chapel — but ran again this morning, which makes five of the last seven days. Wahoo! (Ugh.) Knees felt a little wobbly at first, but otherwise okay. 10:44.

Ran again, three days of five(!), 10:46. It felt more leisurely, mild head winds, but a good time.

I had a whopping, nasty charley horse last night (this is why I didn’t run this morning), which reminded me that my British colleagues have to manage without this evocative, specific diagnosis for a leg cramp. I thought that I had blogged about this deficiency in British English before; I remember discussing it in the…

David notes that a coalition of French museums have released images of their paintings — 150,000 paintings — into the public domain. He’s concerned that they didn’t make it easier to bulk download the images, which I suppose I can sympathise with a little bit. But as an impecunious academic researcher who has recently published…

I ran this morning, too. That’s two days in a row. Don’t worry — I’m not turning into that guy (I don’t think); I just felt vexed about having fallen from my 10:30-ish plateau to this 11:00-ish plateau, and exasperated at not improving my breathing. Really, after three or four years of regular running I…

Friday morning I received the painful news that a dearly-loved former student of mine, the Revd Dr David Efird of York University, had suffered a massive heart attack while exercising at his gym, and had died right away. David was only forty-five years old, an outstanding philosopher, and priest, and leader in his university. More…

11:01, again with mild head winds, cool not cold. And again, harder to breathe than I sense it ought to be.

Tom the Dancing Bug, a/k/a Ruben Bolling, has a lovely bit of doggerel about the complications that arise from the gradual drift of copyrighted material into the public domain: A bear, however hard he tries, Grows tubby without exercise. Edward Bear had barely started When his body bent and farted. You may not recognise his…