Thursday, August 31, 2006

The return of the aching calves

Ok this morning as i woke up i remembered what it was that i wanted to type last night but totally forgot about just as i was about to type it. How did i immediately remember this? Cos as i was descending the top floor of the lofted bed, i suddenly felt sharp pains in my calf muscles - and then it struck me - i forgot to cool down after yesterday's run...

So yesterday, after having a bit more of a spring in my step owing to the TB free thingy (which in any case, really is a much smaller deal than i made it out to be), i went back to the room and decided that i should finally push myself to run - since that has been what i've been telling myself to do without any success ever since i stepped foot in this country - especially after having a taste of the kind of food that i'd by and large be eating everyday...

And i ran - pretty quickly might i add - from Spencer all the way down E. Franklin Street past the intersection with Roosevelt (read: Franklin and Roosevelt - cool huh...) Applebees to the next junction (i know to almost everyone reading this the preceeding had no significance whatsoever, but trust me, it was far) before i decided to turn back because i had already reached 17 minutes and my goal was to run a total of more than 30 minutes so that the workout would be effective.

Oh, but did i mention, that the 17 minutes spent sprinting down E. Franklin was all downhill? So that meant that when i turned back, the journey back to Spencer would be a long and arduous trek uphill. However, as the saying goes, from that point on, it was all downhill from there (though maybe not all downhill since the gradient of the route was uphill but you get the picture right...) - after only around nine or so minutes hobbling up the slope at a snail's pace i decided to just admit that i cannot make it and just walk the rest of the way. Just as well, since i was getting light-headed from the slow ascent - and it definitely had nothing to do with rarefied air as my altitude increased. Nope, it was just due to the fact that i was spent. So light-headed n fact that i was afraid that i would accidentally run myself onto the road and into the path of speeding cars - i might have made the front page of the Daily Tar Heel yet had i not given up and started to walk haha...

Well, after i got back i was dead tired and wanted to just shower and then rest and maybe go and eat a little later. But lo and behold it was tuesday (i.e. get-everyone-together-to-finish-off-people's-meal-plans-before-they-expire-the-next-day day) so i had to quickly hit the showers and then be off to the dining hall [btw, i didn't get a meal plan because i simply cannot imagine myself eating an all-you-can-eat spread the size (the kind of size of spread that in S'pore i'd typically starve a whole day for) of what's offered at the dining hall at least once a day every week, and at the prices offered it just was not worth it for me - and just so you'd know, the 'special' for yesterday's dinner was Kiwi Watermelon Soup - 'nuff said]. This meant that i forgot to cool down and to cut a long story short, accounts for my aching calf muscles this morning...

So anyway, i'm thankful that i'm starting to settle down better here now - i wouldn't exactly say that things are going smoothly, but overall things are working out fine - just the expected issues of coping with a different style of class (and feeling obliged to provide my international student's perspective into the class discussions - my TA dropped his jaw today when i told the class roughly how much certain office bearers back home make annually - and i would too - for goodness' sake his own president makes less than that...)

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