Fitness for the First Week of May

It's been busy, but the first things I'll mention as they're quite painless is that I've been making sort-of progress on the goal of training well enough to pass a firefighter fitness test, and that tomorrow is Ascension Day so there will be no university.

The fitness test has four pillars.

Originally the first pillar was running a certain distance in 12 minutes. But I'm thinking of just generally either making sure I can run 1 km without stopping, or tackling 5 km in intervals of walking and running.

I've been replacing running training with cycling to a degree, just because I do cycle to commute and it would be too tiring to run on top of that.

On Saturday I had the less-than-bright idea of doing 15 second running, 45 second walking intervals, for 20 minutes... on the slopes of the Kreuzberg. For 7 minutes, roughly, it was OK. But after ascending another very steep path where I began to feel near-nausea, it sank in that this wasn't going anywhere. It was also busy in the park: generally when beginning a training regimen, my ego shrinks away from an audience.

The second pillar is sit-ups. I have a fairly curved spine: it will take effort to get to the point where I keep my feet firmly on the ground. I've also forgotten how many one was supposed to do, in which time frame; so I am picking 25 sit-ups.

The third pillar is push-ups. Today I did 15 on the highest incline at a calisthenics park on the Free University campus. But the aim is to do 12 full-body push-ups without an incline, and without long pauses, in the end.

The fourth pillar is trekking for over a mile with a weight. Here again I've forgotten what the weight and the exact distance are supposed to be... I'd want to make sure I'm quite fit before I try it, but perhaps an analogue would be to go up and down a long staircase (or the Teufelsberg?) with telephone books in a backpack.

Anyway, this is probably boring to read about. But after decades of not being conspicuously athletic, it's exciting to me.

***

I need to look over my calendar again to see what else has happened since the last blog post:

Journalistically, I've looked into death in the Middle East and Africa, tensions in Berlin, and taken a few photos for today's anniversary of Germany's capitulation near the end of World War II.

— I think a man shouted 'Lügenpresse' at me when I was wielding my smartphone and notebook, near the German parliament, recently. (I have to accept that it's a matter of time before someone shouts me in the face or physically attacks me. It was driven home today by the news that a former mayor of Berlin was whacked from behind by a man with a known psychiatric illness.) —

Besides I've been cycling around, gathering dozens of photos about the Euro Cup and the European Union elections. It's that time of year where it's hard to take a bad photo: brilliant blue skies, leafy trees with aplomb, beautiful roses and chestnut tree blossoms, and grass without the parched austerity of late summer.

There have always been accidental discoveries while cycling too:

It's not news by any means, but yesterday a crew at a construction site had lost control of a garden-type water hose. It was thrashing about spraying water everywhere underneath a truck. I went over, perhaps needlessly searching for a cause to rescue, seized hold of the hose, and directed all the water into the street drain. Then the construction workers, who'd been laughing at the dancing hose and their own inability to reach far enough across a wooden construction fence, finally maneuvered (as they'd been planning) to kick shut a valve at the base of the hose. 

Less lighthearted: two police vans, a fire truck, and maybe other emergency vehicles near a local park; there was no smoke column nearby and I hoped for the best.

In private life, I've met with former colleagues again after a long hiatus, also met with former teammates in the Wedding part of Berlin, and am putting together plans for another round on Sunday.

Then there are the intense choir rehearsals, and more 'doodling' on the piano: passages from  Tchaikovsky piano concerto, Bach-Gounod Ave Maria, Scarlatti sonatas, Scott Joplin ragtime, and sometimes bits of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, the Bach-Busoni chaconne, some Albéniz or Granados thrown in. It's quite surprising and rewarding to have enough time to make some progress on longer and complex pieces that I couldn't concentrate on while employed full-time.

I've sent off another job application in the meantime. Today I also scanned a QR code of a clothes selling job description where I'll probably have to be honest that I am sort of marmite when it comes to social situations: either I really work or really don't work for people.

As for university, after 2:30 a.m.ish I finally came close to catching up on Greek homework. There's still a long way to go. But either way the professor was touched and pleased that one of my classmates and I had actually prepared...