Running

In the dark ages of my school years, we serfs had no human rights, and our PE teachers were the stuff legends were made of. I still remember clearly a cruel but effective tactic used to make us run faster: The whole group had to run a lap within a given time, and if one person failed, the entire group ran an extra round. If two were slow, we ran two more rounds...so on and so forth. You see, eventually, we did all we could to make the timing, even if we killed ourselves doing so. My heart pounded so furiously that if I were any older than 18, I think I would have dropped dead. but no, miraculously, I always survived. I guess, I was tougher than I thought, haha. In fact, these PE teachers pushed me from a Nil to a Gold in two years, so...*shrug*

Now that I've started jogging again, I'm slowly finding that it can actually be rather enjoyable, if there isn't a whip cracking after you. There is no one to make me run until I am collapsing, and I can listen to exciting music that pushes me on. Well...of course, there would be less obvious results, but never mind. I'm thinking about the long run. A sport has to be reasonably tolerable if I'm going to keep at it.

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I saw this new product launched by OTO, that promises that 5 mins a day is all you need to lose weight, as you do crunches, pushups and stretches on it. For just a moment, I was all ready to take out my credit card. Then a sudden thought occurred to me. Why don't I just do the crunches, pushups and stretches everyday...sans the machine? Why would I need to use a device to do something that I can do on my pilates mat? And I can do more variations on the mat too! Hm...