I keep an eye on this kind of thing.

There’s a blowy lung capacity thing that I’ve had since I was very young. What it does is measure my lung capcity. I don’t really know what the numbers mean, but I keep an eye on it anyway. The figure I used to rely on was 650. This has generally been my maximum for as long as I can remember. Sometimes it could reach 670 on the rare occassion, but that was the exception.

Today, my measurement was 720 and I’ve repeated this several times now. This is brilliant and it must be down to filtered air in my flat and all the deep breathing exercises I’ve been doing over the past month. The odd bike ride and part of my daily exercise may have helped along the way as well. And the reason is that having healthy functioning lungs seems like a good idea with the CV-19 thing going on at the moment.

I know that I’m throwing numbers around with no context and therefore no meaning. So, let me give some point of reference. On New Year’s Day and for four days after, my readings dropped to as low as 350, which is more than 50% lower than where I am now. And all of this give me hope that I can cope with a new virus. Hope is all I have right now, but I have been very, very ill in the past.

I’m confident that I’m in good shape at the moment despite the lack of running, cycling, or weight training over the past seven months I’ve been doing some right things.

My second test is the holding my breath test, which I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember. My record breath holding is around 3 mins 30 seconds and is quite a recent thing. But 2 minutes is what I’d hope to be able to after a few goes whgen I’ve left it for a while. So I tested it a few minutes ago and managed 2 mins 6 sec, which is pretty good. And now, I’m aiming for 3 mins again.

All things considered I’ve managed to keep myself in decent shape. This is my default strategy so I’m ready for when life improves and this is my personal responsibility. After all, health is something I have some control over. Wealth, less so. But hey! There are some rocks I can cling to and some measurments that tell me how things are.