Over the years, as some of you will be aware, I have been pretty active, quite energetic. Hiking through the Dolomites and the German / Austrian mountains. I have spent time in Madagascar exploring the rain forests, fell running along the route of the Three Peaks Yorkshire, mountain biking in the North Yorks Wolds and, during the summer, mountain biking in the Canadian ski resort of Whistler. One of my greatest personal achievements was completing the National Three Peaks, in under 20 hours.

And of course, I have done just a little running. My first success was when I was about 15 and I picked up a winners medal in a road race when I was on holiday in Kirkcudbright. 1985 or 1986. Over the years since I have been an irregular runner, but I have mixed the running with the cycling, mountain biking and the hiking. I have also, once, done some climbing in Skye, in the Cuillins. That was fun. Cold, but fun.

However, I have done very little, anything, for the last three to four years. No running, no hiking, up until the end of 2020, no cycling. Next to nothing.

Today, however, I went running for the first time in three to four years. I ran three kilometres. 18 minutes. A 10k an hour pace. Not good, not great. But, as Carl Sagan once wrote, small steps. And for the first time in three to four years I booted up the running tracking software on my Jolla. Excellent stuff.

The tracker, Rena, uses the GPX extension to save the data, which means that not only is it available within Sailfish but can also be imported into almost any other GPS software that uses the GPX standard. For Linux there is an absolute plethora of excellent GPS, free, open source software. The image chosen is Google Earth.

I have set myself some targets for 2021, including buying myself some better shorts, once the shops are open again in February. Hopefully.