I’ve never been very good at sport. I’ve tried Judo, Karate, swimming and T’ai Chi and given up very soon afterwards. My football-playing nickname was Talentino because I had none. I was the kid that got picked before the last kid for a football game (that’s soccer to the rest of you). I was the penultimate sporting failure.

I hated games (or physical education or physical training or whatever you call it) at school. I have vague memories of horrifyingly cold, damp afternoons being forced to run distances my legs could not carry me and my wheezing lungs could not cope with. I still can’t believe that teachers actually made me attempt high jump, long jump, discus and javelin! I have no co-ordination. I am not a good dancer.

I am moderately good at chess and slightly better at Scrabble; I scored 110 points in one move yesterday playing the word flaxseed for a BINGO across a triple word score. I have learned, somehow, to throw a Frisbee. My sporting prowess ends there. Or it would have done if I hadn’t joined the gym…and started this blog.

I joined the gym when I arrived in New York two years ago as a counterpoint to the fact that I would be quitting my 15-year heavy smoking habit. For an unathletic asthmatic I was a champion smoker. In the days when I smoked cigarettes by the pack I could chomp through 20 Benson and Hedges in less than a day. When I moved on to rolling tobacco I was smoking a 12.5 gram bag a day. To do that you have to smoke more than you don’t smoke.

So here I was in New York. Jobless. And there was no way I was letting my then girlfriend (now wife) pay for my habit. So I quit. And I joined the gym. Since then I have lost, gained and lost something in the region of eight pounds. Not much. I have considerably fewer chins than I used to have but still more than you will see on Broadway billboards or the cover of magazines. It’s my mini, unremarkable victory.

What is remarkable though is that in the past year I have started to enjoy going to the gym a few times a week to mull over story ideas or to forget about writing completely. I usually run for ten minutes and then workout in the weights room for half an hour.

Last night, in anticipation of today’s calorific Thanksgiving feast, I decided to skip the weights and concentrate on cardio, starting with a little run. So I hopped onto the treadmill, I pushed the button for the 5km track, gave myself a slight incline, and I ran.

At six minutes I noticed that I was not out of breath and that my legs felt fine. At around 12 minutes I was still in pretty good condition; I noticed that at my current speed I was less than half way around the course. At 18 minutes I was approaching the longest time I had ever run on a machine and I started to think “what if you ran around the whole bloody track?” I remembered all of those cross country runs at school that I could never finish and I thought, “I might just be able to do this…and when I get home, I can blog about it.”

Yes, dear readers, knowing that I would be able to blog about it the following day pushed me on for the next 14 minutes to an EiNY record. I ran five kilometers—three puny miles—that most fit people probably run three or four times a week. The last six minutes were hell but I did it in just under 32 minutes. And it felt good!

Now on with Thanksgiving! On with the turkey and potatoes with huge dollops of mayonnaise! On with the wine and the beer and the chocolate! Bring it on!

Thanksgiving Links:
Clive Davis provides Christopher Hitchens’ take on Thanksgiving.
How not to cook a Thanksgiv-ing tur-key in a deep fat tur-key fry-er. (Via boingboing)

Craig Newmark intends to shake up journalism. Few people in the UK have even heard of Craigslist but over here you’d have to be living in a closet (that’s a wardrobe to you folks from Leeds) not to know and/or have used Craigslist. Take a look here. I dare you not to be impressed. Now imagine what he could do for news…

I’ve been meaning to blog about this Esquire magazine article written by Wikipedians for a while. Contrary to popular belief Wikipedians are not people from another planet (Wiki) but users of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia (yawn). Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia written by the people who use it. I would challenge anyone not to be impressed by an encyclopedia that includes entries on Leeds Rhinos, Viz and Smiley Faces For the Esquire article, journalist A.J. Jacobs posted an error-ridden draft of a story on Wikipedia and got the community to edit it themselves. You can see the story here. It should appear shortly in the magazine.

Finally, I am pleased to report that contrary to popular belief, I am in fact a Democrat!

You are a Social Liberal (66% permissive) and an… Economic Liberal (33% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Yesterday the Guardian newspaper published its 2nd annual report on British Muslims. But before I get to the travesty that is the Guardian’s woeful attempt at a representative view of one of Britain’s ethnic minorities I want to take issue with columnist Madeleine Bunting. In a complimentary piece to the Guardian report, Bunting wrote:

These particular Muslim predicaments are underscored by a problem endemic in British political culture – a weak tradition of citizenship. In place of a powerful concept of citizen’s rights and responsibilities, we are still subjects of a hereditary monarchy. We use nationalism not citizenship to generate a sense of belonging and entitlement; that disables an immigrant minority.
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In a big city in a big country where bigger is always synonymous with better I suppose I should not have been surprised to come across this Giant Big Apple Beer truck on the Upper West Side. But I was.

What next? The Humongous Big Apple Beer company? The Ginormous Big Apple Beer company? The Biggest Ginormous Huge Apple Big Beer company ever?

I wouldn’t mind but compared to most of the trucks that plow through the city each day this one looked, well, kind of small…