An August Evening Run, and Carrots Whose Glory Is Past

This evening I waited until my smartphone reported that the temperature had finally declined from 34°C to 29°C, then set out for the next phase of my couch-to-5K running project.

It was the same project I already tried in 2018. The running always felt mildly disagreeable (the phrase 'runners' high' felt like a joke) and then I pulled a tendon or something in my foot on Christmas Eve; hobbling sideways up and down a set of S-Bahn stairs after that convinced me that, as the German saying goes, 'Sport ist Mord'. What nudged me into retrying the programme was watching the women's footballers in the Euro Cup last month. Fortunately, cycling to university regularly has made me feel far better cardiovascularly equipped than I did back in 2018, which makes the running more comfortable. Besides I unearthed an old stopwatch, perhaps from the 1990s, while sorting through old boxes in early July; even despite my general indifference to gadgets, the thought of having a 'new' toy for the pursuit was charming.

This is Week Two of the programme, so I had to walk-and-run 5.6 kilometres. As it was past 8:30 p.m. by the time the weather had cooled from a car exhaust heat to a tepid sauna warmth, I literally ran out of enough light to see my stopwatch after ten to fifteen minutes, except if a street lamp was close by or when I reached a floodlit sports field.

But it was agreeable to see people sitting on the sidewalks at restaurants, as a man lounged in a doorway speaking in Italian. An ice cream shop was still doing a little business. In the park, youths were listening to hip-hop, while a lot of joggers and dog-walkers crunched on the gravel, and someone was apparently poetically singing live to the accompaniment of a ukulele on a bridge. I took a sip from a public drinking fountain on the return trip.

All in all, the outing took 57 minutes, plus a little additional walking. Back in the apartment, I had some of Ge.'s excellent sweet potato and carrot soup, and a boiled egg, to reward and restore my energies.

***

Tomorrow I'll be volunteering at the food-sorting place again.

I've had semi-hallucinations where I superimpose memories of bad food onto the good food at home: A carton of fresh raspberries / a carton of raspberries with a disgusting dribble of decomposed bell pepper that's leaked into it, exuding a vinegary smell that lingers in the nose. Crispy orange carrots / plastic-wrapped carrots with dark grey spots all over them. Etc. To put it melodramatically, I think my relationship to food has been disturbed.

That said, the fellow volunteers are friendly and helpful.

In the meantime I've been beginning to read A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh in the evenings, following up on The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Mio, My Son by Astrid Lindgren in a series of revisiting books that I liked as a child.

Besides I've tried out a cleaning schedule from the 1910s. Since I apparently have a low threshold for excitement, I have been quite thrilled about what a difference it makes to 1. wipe down the stovetop, 2. brush the dust off the mat in the entranceway, and 3. make a cup of tea, first thing in the morning; and 4. to make the bed after breakfast, so that it has time to air out.

Lastly I've been watching Netflix, catching up on Orange Is The New Black, which I heard about when it came out in 2013 but never saw until now. Technically I think it's very good. Barack Obama's Our Oceans is very soothing. 

Besides I am watching the British young adult series Heartstopper — only a few minutes at a time, as it reminds me disagreeably of my own school years, and because I'm watching it more to see what 'the kids these days' are watching than for entertainment... It's seemed to me that some of the popular culture for teenagers since 2020 is considerably kinder than anything I encountered back at the turn of the millennium; but as there's also a far-right backlash amongst the younger generation, I fear there is likewise a seamy underbelly.

On the whole, I fear that my social life has gone under during the university semester. It was so important to me to get through the work and get reasonably good grades, but it required putting my personal life on hold and letting my hobbies slide. One reason why I haven't written more blog posts, for example, is that I frankly think I've become boring!