Planning for Exercise

Life intervenes on any and almost every plan.

I am attending a series of meetings organised by the NDPS. These are designed to encourage and to provide pointers for improving your chances of avoiding type 2 Diabetes and becoming reliant on insulin. Our two guides through these meetings are both young and clearly active. The group (about 10 of us) are mostly overweight and in the age range 50 – 80. I say mostly, the group also includes a mother of two small children and a couple of older persons who are quite clearly not overweight. The group characteristics provides excellent material for statistical study.

In my case the interventions from life takes the form of family visits. We have had a very full house none stop for the past 5 months. Mostly, Bryony and I encourage each other to take an early morning walk or similar exercise (The Dog that Walked, The Lurch, Fatigue and the Lurch, Measurement, Walberswick (2016) and Girls, walks and maps). Even so plans do not always work out.

Yesterday, I had one of those NDPS meetings and I had taken almost no exercise since Saturday – see Boudicca Way (Stage 2). The whole point of these meetings is to encourage group discussion about ones successes and failures. I was determined that my contribution should not balance on the failure side rather than at least some success.

Getting to the meeting at the University of East Anglia campus from Harleston is something of a pain when using public transport. The buses contrive to get me there either way too early or just too late. I opted to visit Patrick (the OU rules are changing under the Tories - this was a chance to plan for 2016/17), then walk to UEA in time for the 13:30 start.

I’ve split the route up into two sections as shown below.

Patrick to Eaton

Eaton to UEA (Medical Building)

Sadly, this only works out at a walking speed of about 3 mph. Not quite achieving that level of aerobic exercise expected in the NDPS advice.