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Ramblings of a pixel-pushing, barely-sane Sabbatical officer and Meeja Whore 
Latest diary entries by AlexH tagged with "health"
By Alex Harries
on Sat, 25th Aug 2007 at 22:53
A few days ago I looked downwards and had to lean over my ever-growing gut to see what shoes I had on (flip-flops, of course), so yesterday I decided to make an effort to start getting fit. In all fairness, Ed & Rep Sabb Andy Machin was also starting his training regime, so I've really just stolen his idea. Given how much I smoke, I decided cycling might be better than running for my knees and pride (since collapsing in a crying heap wheezing for breath before I get to the end of my road is ... well, rubbish). So, yesterday was cycling day, and pelting off down the seafront for a sprint/cruise/sprint session was going fine until My New Best Mate decided to pull out right in front of me in his shiny new BMW while following his mate (also in a BMW) out of a side road. Cue the only perfectly-formed string of expletives I've ever shouted at anyone in my life without a rehearsal; his face was a picture. So was mine, I imagine.... Today was spent wheezing up and down the local swimming pool with Andy, and since I was late (as always), he'd done 32("-ish") lengths by the time I'd done 1. I managed 11 and decided to call it a day before I drowned - something tells me I need a bit more commitment here... Meanwhile, back at work, I've been getting more than a little twitchy, thanks to a combination of some extra-potent filter coffee and a backlog of e-mails and to-dos which I'll probably be working on until midnight tonight. I've also been trying to tie up a number of loose ends left over from last year's web work, and get some new projects rolling, with the end result that I've been sending out literally hundreds of e-mails to my unfortunate colleagues, several of whom have now no doubt put me on their junk e-mail list, so this (from the BBC News Magazine) made me grin a bit today... Anyway, there's no real point to all this rambling, but I guess I ought to mention what I've been up to over the last couple of weeks, since that is (so I'm told) the reason for this blog... NUS Communication In Action training, Loughborough UniInteresting and good fun, and I think I picked up a load of very good ideas. The last day included a debate over how much control the Union's executive should exert over its media, i.e. should the Sabbs have the right to, for example, veto something they don't like? How about something they know is libellous? Illegal? On the other hand, how much right should the Union's media - for example, the student newspaper/magazine - have to say what it likes, and to ignore the wishes of the exec? This generated a lot of debate, but (imvho) I suspect in practise that the media should be allowed to write whatever it likes - within some bounds of reason I won't claim to know as intimately as our more experienced staff do, but also that the Sabbs - who have been elected by the whole student body to represent their views and needs - should also have the ability to have items published as long as it's in the student body's best interests. As always, it's a bit of a balancing act... Scouts' Jamboree, EssexI was also shipped off to the Scouts' Centennial Jamboree by Making Waves, a PR company who do a lot of work with students, to do a spot of reporting on the event. Of course, not actually being a journalist of any shape or flavour, I felt like a total fraud all weekend, but managed to write copious pages of notes and will hopefully be able to write My First Feature with the results. While I was there I also met a lot of the Sabbs who are heading off to Ibiza to promote the About 535 more words in this entry Permanent link
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By Alex Harries
on Thu, 11th Jan 2007 at 21:17
Since I've spent a shedload of money on the bike (and a couple of toys) so I can go out and do some distance training, I thought it might be good for me to go through what I've done to get fit lately...
Ok, so that's the money spent.
I think that comes under the heading of "must try harder". Oops.
By Alex Harries
on Fri, 3rd Nov 2006 at 01:49
I've just spent £275 on mountain biking kit. Given the fact I'm part Sunderland, that's like waking up and realising you were so drunk last night that you gave a mate your car, your house, your significant other/laptop/inflatable sheep, and a big wet snog for good measure - in other words, I;m suffering acute pain from the wallet area at the moment.
The worst bit is, I didn't buy anything impressive, such as a set of super-light wheels, or a frame made from unobtainium - oh no, it's much more boring that that: I've decided that, since swimming poses too much danger of drowning, death-by-horrible-disease, or being mown down by a school of rubber hat-equipped blue rinsers on a morning swim'n'chat session, I'm going to try and get my cardiovascular fitness up (also known as, "trying to force myself to smoke a bit less") by cycling up and down the twisty lanes of Hampshire. Probably mostly at night, since I don't seem to be able to get out of bed before dusk during winter... ;o) Clearly, much safer than churning up and down a swimming pool. Or not... So I've been over to Evans Cycles dot com to pick up the parts I need to convert my trials bike (which I built under some naive belief that I had the required sense of balance and lack of self-consciousness required to hop around on one's back wheel and jump up and down "things" in order to be a proper trials rider) into a proper cross-country spec'd mountain bike - chainset, gear levers, cables, longer stem, nuclear-powered lights, daft little back pack that will only hold a spare tyre and an hour's-worth of food (for me, so about one shopping trolley load then...), helmet, reinforced gloves to protect my delicate digits in case of a stack... You get the idea. And somehow that came to £275. No, I don't understand how, either. But when you've just been paid, and getting fit whilst seeing All that said, I used to cycle a lot - where my 'rents live are some great trails, and I used to love hacking up and down them a hundred miles at a time, so I've got a fighting chance of surviving. The only worry I have now is that I can't actually bring myself to go and buy a pair of padded cycling shorts (lycra - oh, the shame...) so there's a reasonable chance I'll be identifiable solely by my gait in the coming weeks. That and the fact I'll inevitably have red marks around my (newly-shaven) head from a badly-fitting helmet. So, in short, if I didn't look comical enough before, I'm certainly going to look a plonker now. Here's to good health... And chafage... about me"Grumpy, geeky old grey-head"
blogroll & links (what's this?)More from me...UPSU stuff...Definitely read this...
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