couple of weeks ago I updated the Sports page, adding some new awards. In two weeks from now the annual rowing competition will take place and that requires hard training. Other competitions will follow, so stamina improvements will pay off. I have also made it into the quarter finals of the table tennis tournament (next game pending). So far, so good.

xciting news today: I have won the contest for the first time in 3 years. I finished second last year and the year before that, having won it in 2004 and 2006.

Trophies have not been handed out yet, but I’ll need to update this page, which is well out of date.

will blog about this soon with some more details, but here are the photos taken this afternoon.

On the left is Mike Coogan, winner of this year’s contest. I came second.

was recently informed that I had finished in second place in this year’s Mr. Fitness competition. I will write some more about it when I find the time, when I put online the results and when I take a photo of the trophy I am about to receive (shown about is last year’s trophy). The award ceremony is due soon.

Mike Coogan was this year’s winner. He was last year’s winner as well. I won the competition for two consecutive years prior to that.

Photo from around 1984

AST week I mentioned the rowing competition, which I completed quite some time ago. I can finally say with certainty that I have won. The time it took me to complete one mile (ergo, level 10, 1600 meters) was 5 minutes and 23.8 seconds. This is apparently a little step back, however, because I completed the same distance in just 5 minutes and 13 seconds when I was 20. Back then, however, I practised throughout and beforehand, making sure I was prepared for the challenge. I was possibly in a better shape as well, although I tend to doubt it. In any event, I have finally modified the sports page to mark the achievement.

Interesting article about a clinical study at Columbia:

Columbia-Led Study Finds Exercise Benefits Area of Brain Involved in Aging

Neuron-Growth First Observed in Living Brain

Good news to those of us who take a break from work in order to engage in physical activity. The image above, by the way, is my own brain.

have finally put behind me some chores that I have been escaping and postponing for almost a year. First of foremost, I needed to spend many hours converting documents and papers of mine to HTML, then filing them sensibly under the Web site (here is the largest one among about 10). It was like opening a Pandora’s box, taking a glance at old papers and trying to figure out what fits where. The mind slips when it is no longer familiar with old material that got mis-filed.

Photo from

The second thing which I finally finished is the rowing competition. I did fairly well at it, given the circumstances, but it had my throat in a bad state for almost a day. I will soon report about. I can’t do so now because it is too early to announce the results. If I win, there will be an excellent prize and it will count as a personal achievement which is becoming hard to replicate as not only do I age, but I also seem to spend less time at the gym nowadays. I am not entirely certain what impact my career will have on my physique, but I am not worried (yet!). I’m probably in a better shape than I have ever been, but it varies depending on exercise. Some things I have neglected while others, which do not count as ‘dirty laundry’, I just carry on doing.