I am on the next stage of recovery, resistance work in the local gym. I am following a set of core exercises suggested by an exercise specialist at Prostate Scotland. Today was my third session.

The core issue is that the hormone implants and radiotherapy tend to reduce muscle mass and the resistance work is intended to restore it and also help create a cancer-suppressive environment in the body. The exercises I have are targeted at the main muscle groups and include deadlifts, a first for me. I’m not a complete stranger to resistance work but in the past it has always been as an adjunct to cardio training, mainly running; this time the resistance work is the main course and any cardio is an adjunct to it, at least for the first few months until things get back into balance.

The target is to find the weight for each exercise where I can manage 8 – 10 repetitions before having to stop, then doing three sets of them. Once I get used to that weight and can do, say, 10 to 15 repetitions, I raise the weight a notch, and so on. I would like to get back to running, but it isn’t a priority at present.

I won’t know how well the hormones and radiotherapy worked until early June when tests are scheduled.

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I’ve been reading a lot lately. I mentioned Stevie Smith a couple of posts ago but I’ve also been dipping into Thomas Hardy’s poetry (there is a lot of it, of varying quality), Malcolm Guite’s first volume of the Arthurian corpus in epic verse, Galahad and the Grail, and Patricia A McKillip’s Ombria in Shadow. The latter is an object lesson in writing Fantasy to a very high standard and has given me plenty to think about as regards craft and technique in general.

I also read The Hobbit for the first time since the girls were small; it is an odd book. I enjoyed revisiting it but every so often the writing irritated me. Still, I enjoyed it enough to make the mistake of revisiting the first of the Peter Jackson Hobbit films to see if time has improved it; it has not.