I came to Carrington in February 2023. During the first few months I took up walking. I don’t know why, I think it was to distract me when I had nothing else to think about. I’ve forgotten exactly when I started, but certainly in the last 12 months, I’ve averaged walking 6 to 8 kilometres a day – on some days more than 12 kilometres!
(In saying this I’m assuming that 1,300 of my steps is 1,000 metres – I haven’t been able to think of a way, or carry out a way, of being more accurate.)
One of the advantages of Carrington is that it has such long corridors that you can walk just as much in doors as out doors – away from bad weather and even at 10 or 11 o’clock at night – and I often do.
Then, in mid-May, 2 months ago, I started going to a gym.
I had been vaguely conscious that there was a gym only 400 yards away from my room ever since I came to Carrington, but it was only 2 months ago that I got around to giving it a go.
I think I’ve been incredibly lucky!
The instructor is a 25 year old Australian born Indian called Sahil. Pronounced “S are hill.”
Sahil claims to have two University degrees in gym stuff. Whether this is true or not, he is incredibly scientific in his approach. He has a card for each customer, which is used to control each of the gym machines you use. First of all, he carries out an “assessment” of where you’re at, and he is then able able to increase the degree of difficulty of each machine as you get stronger.
He is not busy. I go at 2 o’clock in the afternoon 3 days a week, and there are never more than 3 others besides me – sometimes no others. So his supervision is really personal.
And he charges less than 5 dollars a session! Which is all a bit of a mystery?
Sessions are 35 to 40 minutes long, and after my first session I was flabbergasted, absolutely exhausted – and I’ve only been slightly less so after subsequent sessions.” I thought “Wow! I don’t know what this is going to do for me, but it’s sure going to do something.” And at times I’ve felt like a different person – I couldn’t recommend it more strongly.
After 3 or 4 sessions Sahil said to me, “You are absolutely at the top level of fitness for a person of your age!!!” Was it just good for business for him to say this?
Of course, this would be mainly due to my walking – it couldn’t be much due to my gym sessions, after such a short time.
(And there’s a staff member lady here, who keeps telling me that I look 10 years younger than I did when I first came to Carrington – I don’t know if she’s just being nice?)
Incidentally, there’s often a guy in the gym when I’m there, who Sahil claims is 95! – he seems to be exercising at about the same level as I am.
Overall, both the walking and the gym – big slices of good luck for me! I’m not used to good luck!
This is a heading from the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission’s website. In other words, it’s claiming to be committed to protecting public health and safety by the way in which it deals with complaints about health service providers.
