Sixty-nine, dudes!

They've been giving out "Official British Army Fitness Programme" booklets with the Guardian (and upsetting some of their readers), so last night I had a go at the Army sit-up test - do sit-ups constantly for two minutes, and record your score. Note that these are sit-ups, not trunk curls or stomach crunches or any of that nonsense (those are elsewhere in the booklet). However, you're meant to anchor your feet so you're using your hip flexors.

I managed 69 (with noticeable loss of form after the first minute), which for my age is apparently "very good". "Excellent" would have been 77 or above - I'll hold off applying for the SAS for a bit longer. Actually, since the official website is registration-only, I'll include the relevant bit here:

age	Under 30	30-34	35-39	40-44	45-49
excellent	77+	72+	71+	67+	62+
very good	59-76	55-71	52-70	47-66	43-61
good	50-58	46-54	43-51	37-46	34-42
average	40-49	38-45	33-42	27-36	25-33
poor	0-39	0-37	0-32	0-26	0-24

The instructions are:

When sit ups are performed with the feet anchored by a partner or low object, the hip flexors assist, making the exercise less taxing on your abdominals. Start by lying on the floor with your knees bent and feet anchored. Have your hands across your chest. Maintaining a flat back, curl your head, shoulders and torso off the floor until your torso is in an upright position, then roll back down through the spine to the start position and repeat. Warning: do not perform sit-ups with anchored feet if you suffer from lower back pain. Cease performing sit-ups if you can no longer keep your back flattened and find it is arching off the floor.

Anyone else fancy a go?

Job app update

... I didn't get the Dalhousie job. "Many highly qualified applicants, only able to forward two to the final round, please apply next year." Bah. I'll email them back and ask what I could have done better.

My supervisor was as surprised as I was about the "research proposals shouldn't be about your proposed research" fiasco, incidentally. And his most recent research proposal is used as an example of how to do it right by the body which awarded his grant :-(

Edit: they've replied already! There were 14 applicants for two slots, several of whom already had substantial publication records. Ah well, Canada's not going anywhere.