Telecommunicable

So the past few days I've been a little ill.  It's nothing major, but I feel it best to stay away from exercise.  As such, my new found collaboration with a rugby team up the road (coaching kids) was interrupted on Sunday.  I tried contacting the coach several times, but despite a phoneback from him (which I missed by a fraction) I was unable to relay my sickness.  What makes it more frustrating is that he's left messages for me, that I can't access because my phone is indecipherable.  Endeavour to make contact, I suppose.

I also haven't been to the gym for a week, which is unlike me. In this time I've been toying with the idea of running to the gym, as I feel general fitness is my current weakness.  The route covers a lot of road, and has a number of stops (for traffic lights etc) so it would suit my generally desired type of fitness (I always have an eye focused on rugby).

There are two problems I can foresee with this:  It takes twenty minutes by bike, when I'm burning.  By burning I mean I spend the entire time, trying to overtake cars.  I'm all over the road, swinging left and right trying to get there in as little time as possible.  When I do arrive, I generally do half an hour of upper body work before I start on the legs, because they're pretty jellified upon arrival.  Ultimately, this means a 45-50 minute run to the gym, a workout, then another 50 minute run back.  I despise running, in all shapes and forms - it's torture.  To spend the equivalent of an entire rugby match just running around; with nothing to tackle and no try line seems ludicrous.  On the flip side, there can surely be fewer things better for fitness than that.

The other problem is one of shoes.  I have a viable pair of shoes to run in right now, but they won't last a year of running like that.  At least, they won't offer any kind of protection for a year.  My knees are aching now, and I've not even tried running there yet.

I predict this cold will have flown by Friday, at which point I will attempt running to the gym.  Luckily, the two week hiatus will result in me losing at least a kilo, (as was the trend when I first arrived) so it will be slightly easier to haul myself along.  I don't know what other people experience when they go for a run, but I just feel like I'm trying to push a walrus along sandpaper that's glued to the floor.  It's like pushing an immovable weight, on a floor with an infinitely high friction coefficient.  I feel the same when I play rugby, especially when I don't have the ball or I'm not about to tackle someone - the difference is the disappearance of this burden when the time comes to act.  I guess that's the amazing effect of adrenaline.

#Edit

I'm watching a group of kids warming up to participate in P.E.  I can't remember ever warming up for P.E, except in the rare case that we actually had to do some exercise (this was rare, in the compulsory portion of my education).  What I notice, is that they completely disregard conventional Western wisdom (contradictory?) with regards to correct warmup procedure.  We're all taught not to 'bounce,' that is to say, fling a body part to the point at which it is fully extended/stretched and quickly tense that muscle to pull it back to the starting position.  This view hasn't reached Asia yet, apparently, and while fine for these kids (they're not really trying and don't care enough to injure themselves) I wonder if this is one of the reasons for relatively poor performances among Japanese athletes.  I've seen rugby teams here do the same thing, and I cringe.  I watch people in the gym do the same thing, and cringe.

Watching the chinese warm-up on the track prior to their events during the Olympics, I noticed they employed a more 'Western style,' approach to warmups.  Perhaps it is more indicative of a lack of interest in improvement, then, than one of the myriad outright causes.

#Edit 2:  So Japanese people use e-mail with their phones, not SMS.  SMS is outdated enough that you can't send one, unless the recipient is on the same network as you.  Imagine that in England, with the 50 different networks available.