Chariots of fire

I am not much of a sportsman; indeed, I would rather sleep or chill out watching some good movie than do any sort of physical exercise. In my primary and secondary school days, I never looked forward to having P.E. lessons. The only true sportive venture I ever enrolled in was playing basketball with a Maltese club for 2 years or so, an activity I was forced to quit after an injury sustained during the same sport! Well, apparently things are about to change...

When I flew to the UK for the first time to do my M.Sc., I was thrilled about the sports facilities which Imperial offered. The university's sports complex, "Ethos", is considered to be 1 of London's best and students have free unlimited access to it facilities. Prior to my departure, I assured all my family, friends and work colleagues that I will be exploiting all of the facilities: gym, fitness studio, pool...I even dared say, "I will be so well-built that you will not recognise me when I am back!" I know what you are asking...could they recognise me? Well, no they did not...I gained almost 10kg during my stay at Imperial, primarily due to the fact that English cuisine is heavily blessed with all sorts of fried food and, more importantly, I only visited "Ethos" once in 12 months.

Then came the next phase: work. I justified my lack of physical exercise by saying that an M.Sc. at Imperial is demanding and left no time for the gym (albeit I found time to travel in UK and Europe, visit all of London, engage in social eating and drinking events etc.) but all this was about to change. Now that I am about to start working, I had no revision, tutorials or studying to do after 5pm and could easily go for a jog or subscribe to a local gym. In fact, there was a gym close to the flat I was living in down in Epsom. I know what you are asking...the answer is: no, I did not do any of what I planned. All I did was gain another 5kg.

Back in Malta, with summer fast approaching and wishing to make the best out of the Maltese beaches without exposing excessive evidence of my Guinness and British food consumption, I decided to start jogging. Well, I did! I went for a jog on a Monday, and another on the Tuesday but none on the Wednesday. You see, the weather tends to get quite hot and humid in Malta, making any sort of jogging attempts simply impossible.

It was time to come back to London, back to Imperial actually. "Ethos" is still free for students and, despite all the global warming talk, the English climate is generally fresh and not too hot, especially at this time of the year. What did I tell everyone I will be doing once I am here? Exactly, jogging and making use of the sport facilities. To date, I virtually engaged myself in some form of exercise everyday - a minimum walk of 25+25 minutes to go to uni and back, a night jog of another 20 minutes and the occasional swim in the "Ethos" pool. And the minimum of 12 flights of stairs everyday. Besides not consuming any chocolate, crisps, burgers and fast food but fresh and dried fruit instead.

Results? I do not have scales here and I am no weighing machine, but let us say my jeans are fitting me more comfortably. And it feels good that after a day on campus, whatever body energy is left does not get stored but is consumed. So, three cheers for: "Ethos" and its superb facilities, fresh English weather for making jogging possible and my iPod which accompanies me in all of my walking/jogging activities!