Monday, June 8, 2009

Running vs Watching

Yesterday morning I woke up at 5:15am for my "long run". Well, actually it wasn't very "long"—it's only 17km. I'm gradually building up my distance for the full course of the Borneo Marathon 2 in October. I think I'm not training hard enough—2 short runs during the weekdays, plus a long run during the weekends will help a little, but to be more effective, I need to run at least another short run on a weekday. This I will have to start doing very soon.

I completed the 17km in a modest 1hr 45 mins. The plan is to build up the distance to 36km 3 weeks before the day of the marathon. However, if I can help it, I'd like to complete the full 42km before the actual event. The worrying thing about all this is I felt very tired even to complete that 17km. I don't know if I'm ever gonna reach 30km, let alone 42km.

Today my legs are still sore from the 17km run. But by tomorrow I'll have run another 8km. I'm still accumulating only an average of about 40km per week up to now, although obviously I'll have to increase that gradually to 90km-100km per week, 3 weeks before the marathon. So there's a lot of work to do between now and October. I hope to remain healthy throughout the next few months so that there won't be any interruptions to my training programme.

Whenever I do my long runs, I'd have plenty of time to think—sometimes about work, sometimes about other things in general. I like to keep my mind occupied with other thoughts because I feel by doing that I can "trick" my body into forgetting about its exhaustion from the running. But alas, it doesn't really work.

Anyway, as I was fighting my exhaustion, I suddenly thought of an email I received from a friend a few days ago. He attached a scanned news article about men's health. After reading that article, I surfed the net to find out more; and I found exactly the same article here.

I'm not trained in the medical field, and I don't have any background in scientific researches. But I feel for a doctor to declare that "there is no question that gazing at breasts makes men healthier," based on a survey of only 200 men is somewhat too reckless. Ordinarily, in order to arrive at a viable conclusion, a much larger sample is required. 200 is just too small a sample size to represent the billions of male population in this world.

I'd like to think that I am a healthy normal man, and although I can still admire a sexy female body, I doubt that looking at women's breasts can make my "heart pump any faster" than it usually does and "improve my blood circulation". And surely looking at women's breasts for a period of 10 minutes can't have the same effect as running for 30 minutes? I wonder what Dr Karen Weatherby does whenever she goes to the gym; maybe she should try running for 30 minutes and see if she still feels the same way about comparing the 10-minute breast-watching with aerobics exercise.

Besides, for some men, maybe looking at women's breasts can even lead to frustration; and that frustration can lead to a higher blood pressure? Well, OK, unless if they can proceed beyond the "looking".

I think the truth about humans in general is that we are different from one another. Some men would become excited—maybe overly so—by just looking at women's breasts; some are hardly affected by it. And there is also the element of boredom. Even if a man can get excited looking at women's breasts, he'd probably grow tired of doing it 10 minutes everyday. Very soon, he'd not find it exciting at all.

To generalise that we men can extend our lives by 4 to 5 years is a bit too far fetched. There must be millions other factors which can affect the lifespan of an average man. If I can extend my life by 4 to 5 years, I'd like that very much. But I doubt that I'd ever try the breast-watching approach. I'll take my chances with running and other aerobics exercises.


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