In the last 6 months I have run 50 miles, in 7.5 hours. Not that much really, and it only lost me 4,500 calories. My average pace was 9 min 20 a mile — which is only a paltry 6.4 mph.

I hardly think this qualifies me to call myself a runner. I’ve not landed up being bitten by the bug, or entered races, or noticed a difference in my fitness level, but at least I’ve not injured myself. (Perhaps I’m lucky, as I don’t really understand what sort of warm-up and the all-important warm-down I should do.) But what does make a runner? If a writer is just someone who regularly writes — whatever the quantity or quality — then perhaps I am a runner. Perhaps I’ll settle for now to call myself an “intermittent jogger”.

What do you think makes a runner?

We attacked one of the bookshelves last night, as part of my continual drive to get rid of things out of the house and out of our lives. Over the last few weeks we’ve thrown away 30 or so old VHS tapes we’ve recorded off the box, and given some commercial ones to charity shops. I’ve also thrown away a dozen cassette tapes, though must be another 100 to go through. I really don’t want to pay the studios again for buying the same music on a different medium (be it CD or MP3), but my options are limited:

• transfer from tape to MP3 - all sorts of simple or complex software out there to help me (and if I had a desktop PC some hardware too), but I think the time consumed per tape will be quite high (fiddle with levels, get the track breaks right, title songs right), and I may well not be delighted with the quality of the resulting tracks. I’ve tried before recording some important items into PCs, and it was always harder than it should have been, and with a loss of high frequencies, and the addition of lots of hiss.
• buy replacements through iTunes - dead simple for those albums available on iTunes - but they will almost certainly be locked with DRM, which limits my options unhelpfully. The situation is improving slowly as the Studios appear to be swallowing DRM-free licensing just avoid Apple getting a complete monopoly of supply. In the UK this includes 7digital which is growing quickly.
• hunt around on BitTorrent sites for others who have shared the files - after all I have paid once for the song already! However, my limited experience in this in the past for some critical tracks showed it was very hit and miss, time consuming, and of course liable to malware.

It’s looking bad. My best bet has to be to take a deep breath and be ruthless about what I really want to listen to still. And pay up for MP3 versions for those that I really want to still be part of my life. Most of the artists I like aren’t chart toppers, so they could do with the money …

Now to the books: we got rid of 35 (novels to the WRVS for the hospital library, some to charity shops, and a few in the bin). Unfortunately that still leaves a whopping 710 according to the catalogue We are managing to part with more novels that we’ve read, so the fraction that are Christian reference books keeps going up. But all of this is less impressive still have calculated that we’ve bought about 100 books so far this year … ahem.

We’ve sold a few DVDs off, but we’ve hardly thought about them, or the CD collection. Maybe I need to ironically buy a copy of It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff by Peter Walsh to further motivate me to keep the de-cluttering going.

Some cholesterol matters … ‘cos cholesterol matters.

I said to Adrian the other day that I was keen to make sure my cholesterol levels weren’t too bad - I realised I didn’t actually know what cholesterol was, or why some of it could be ‘good’ and some of it ‘bad’. And that the labels showing the nutritional content of food rarely mentions cholesterol. He pointed me at a little book that would answer both my questions.

I’ve now read a lot of the material on it that deals with cholesterol, plus some related subjects around cardio-vascular disease, such as blood pressure. As much to check I’ve understood it, I’ve tried to do a short summary …

Cholesterol is one of many fats in our bodies, and we can’t do without it, as it helps form cell membranes, some important hormones, and helps absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. The problem comes if we have too much of it floating around. Despite what I’d assumed, most of our cholesterol doesn’t come from what we eat, but is naturally produced in our livers. LDLs carry cholesterol from the liver to the cells - but have the rather Royal Mail-like tendency to lose of its fatty payload in the arteries along the way, leading to the build-up of deposits which produces angina, blood clots and heart attacks. HDLs on the other hand carry spare cholesterol from cells back to the liver to turn them into bile acid which helps break down ingested fats. So what’s the fuss?

Well, the amount of fat-laden foods we eat does determine what goes on in the liver and then the blood. Eat more fats and more LDL is produced. In this, saturated fats are worse than polyunsaturated ones, which are worse than monounsaturated ones - and trans-fats are possibly the worst of all.

It suggests blood levels of LDL + HDL need to be less than 5, and ideally less than 4. Back in 2002 mine was 4.8. It all suggests that more importantly that the TotalChol:HDL ratio be well below 4.5. Mine was 5.3. So, some work to do. Hence the recent exercise. There’s lots of sensible-sounding advice on diet in the book, which I can summarise for me as being to eat more oily fish and nuts - particularly instead of some red meat and processed grains. Egg yolks - despite having more cholesterol than most foods - are also good for raising HDLs and lowering LDLs.

The book also mentions Body Mass Index as being another useful indicator - it should be between 18 and 25. In 2002 I was 21.9, and I reckon I’m now 22.7.

Today I’m happy to say I’m half way to my first running goal:

It’s too early to see any improvement in heart rate, recovery rate, weight etc. But it is encouraging when I finished my run today, clicked ’stop’ on the iPod, and then I heard Lance Armstrong say:

Hi, I’m Lance Armstrong. Congratulations - you’ve just completed your longest workout yet!

Clever old Nike/Apple

Having set out to do some running again, I have managed 3 short runs in the last 4 days - helped by me being on holiday.

After a couple I received by Nike+ Sports Kit, so it can measure the runs, and upload them to Nike’s website for me, or all the world, to be, errr, underwhelmed at. (Well I certainly feel running at a rate of 9 min/mile isn’t that great.) I’ve decided to go public - so you can keep an eye on my progress as well.

I’ve also set a first goal: 10 runs in the next 4 weeks. Here’s the current state of play as shown by Nike:

My resolution at New Year was to get fitter - particularly by cycling more and taking up running. With time off work ill that’s hardly happened. Taking advice from runners, I decided to invest in some new equipment to give me a boost to get started. As I’ve long had my eye on the Nike+ Sport Kit, that allows runners to have their iPod measure their runs and progress, this seemed like the obvious answer. So yesterday I bought a pair of Nike road running shoes suitable for my kind of gait, and went for a 20 minute run this morning. All pretty good, except that 20 minutes after I finished the run, my heart-rate was still over 120 bpm. Shows that I need the exercise! (Though not of the mind: I do a few Sudoku or Ken Ken puzzles a week to keep mentally alert )