In the university I attend, we sometimes call it the National University of Stairs, for one very obvious reason; we have stairs littered all over the campus that it sometimes feel as if it's part of the university's attempt to keep its undergraduates and staff exercising and fit. Of course, it rarely amounts to proper exercise (unless you did something ridiculous like try running back and forth between the 2 ends of my faculty (which is a very long distance, trust me, it takes about 15 to 20mins when you walk, especially if you take the long route).

So I've been back attending classes on campus for 4 weeks now, and climbing all over the faculty hasn't been easy because, let's face it, I haven't exactly been exercising. The last straw finally came when while trying to get to the lab for a practical, after I was done climbing up 8 flights of stairs to get to the 4th storey, I was utterly breathless. This, compared to when I was in my first year and doing 12 flights and 6 storeys without much problem. I actually commented that this was my heart's way of telling me that it wasn't in a good shape and needed some training.

I finally heeded all those painful and breathless messages my body's been sending me for 4 weeks. 4 weeks of panting as I ran to catch the bus, after I climbed the stairs to get to the labs or from one lecture theatre to another. I guess my fitness has really been going from bad to worse (I was never all that into sports and physical education) since I left junior college because that was the last time I did anything actively (be it swimming; my junior college had PE swimming, or running; my junior college ran PE lessons like boot camp, just ask anyone who studied there). So this week, on Wednesday and today, I went to the gym. Ideally, I would have swam but the weather here has been so erratic that it wouldn't surprise me if I got caught in a thunderstorm 20 minutes after I entered the pool. So I opted for the gym, and ran.

Okay, not ran, because after years of not actually exercising, I don't think I'm capable of running. More like walked/jogged. The first time I did 3.7km, with lots of walking, so that took me some 35 minutes (don't laugh, lol). And today, I did 3.6km in 30 minutes! I don't really think it's my body becoming drastically healthier after just an hour in the gym on Wednesday, but rather that hour then had reminded me that I had to pace myself if I didn't want to look like a loser on the treadmill. Roflol. Somehow, running that distance kind of reminded me of the road runs in junior college where the teachers would sadistically make us run 3.6km in under 30minutes, and that was with this awfully steep slope that I LOATHED. It was then it really hit me that I'm seriously unfit. Because while I was always one of the slowest girls in my junior college, I managed to finish that particular route in a few seconds under 25 minutes when I was still studying there. Crap.

So yea, maybe I really should start exercising to get back my unhealthy-but-definitely-healthier-than-now state. =S