I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. I’m surprised that I’m still going at all. Three young women jog in front of me, as if they were on a light walk. I’m trying to keep up, worrying if I don’t I won’t find the way back to my car. Whatever am I doing here!

What I’m doing is summer training for our Short Track Speed Skating Club. If I don’t train, I’ll be terribly embarrassed when we start the skating season in the late fall. When I first joined the club last January, I had an excuse for not being so fit: I was just a beginner. I have no excuse not to be running with the girls today.

We started off at the track by the Munot, Schaffhausen’s Castle. There are numerous sets of stairs going down to the old city core or the Rhein River, and they aren’t just short flights either. Angela takes us down the one, and up again, twice. Jog along for a bit, to the next flight. Down again, and up again twice, this time two stairs at a time with one leg. Jog along for a ways – now I’m just running so I don’t get lost. This next flight of stairs is really long. I opt out of the first go at it, but do the second, of course.

We’re almost done. Just for the exercises now. The situps, the kind that really hits your gut. Forty, Angela says, we’ll do it together. And I surprise myself – I do it. Forty more, Angela says, and I do it again.

Actually, I have to be honest – I always feel good afterwards. I do things I was sure I couldn’t do. If I can surpass myself that way in sports, couldn’t I do that with the rest of life too? Like in marketing my book??