I’ve hit ‘pay now’ and so I might as well admit it on here, since my unwillingness to spend money will make me see this thing through: I’ve just bought some trainers for running. I plan to follow the famous Couch-to-5K training plan which is reputed to get you fit no matter what. I don’t know how unfit or not I am so I’ll trust the article’s suggestion to go pretty easy.

Why am I doing this? Well, atm the only exercise I get is walking very quickly around Oxford. Despite doing this about four or five times a day for anything from ten to twenty minutes, it’s not much, and so for general health and fitness I should do more. Why do I suddenly care about being fit through exercise? Aside from being a Good Thing in the long term, in the more immediate future I would like more mental and physical energy. This is not the solution to all my current issues but perhaps it will help. And why running? Because I like being up and about very early in the morning and I don’t like the idea of a man-made gym, and I have no interest in actual sports.

Shoe-buying was a bit of a minefield. I have never owned any trainers, and a shop assistant assured me the only solution was shoes priced above £100, which is obviously ridiculous. The Internet to the rescue, having me wet my feet. I am still rather unsure because it’s hard to judge how likely one is to destroy one’s knees by wearing cheap shoes (I bought some priced at £40 ‘reduced’ to £20) with lots of conflicting information out there. So we’ll see; if this goes well I can upgrade.