Category: Random

Ah, Friday.  Welcome back my friend.  The weekend is now upon us 😊  Times must be changing because what I’m most looking forward to this weekend is hitting the gym. Normally it would be plonking myself in front of the telly and getting a cheeky take-away.  However my flat is now a TV-free zone (I’ve not missed it at all), and seeing as I have a fridge packed to the rafters with veggies and good proteins (see above!), I’m also looking forward to cooking up a bit of a storm.  I’ve started a new four-week cycle at the gym – PT once a week and a new programme to do myself another couple of days – and I absolutely love it. The PT sessions are getting tougher, but I got home from the sesh on Tuesday and felt totally amped.  Honestly I never feel this good after a run! So as much as I’d love to see myself tearing across the finish line of an Ironman, arms aloft, victorious, I just, well, can’t be assed.  The thought of all that long, slow (for me) endurance currently fills me with dread, and all I can imagine is feeling knackered, chafed and broken. Lifting weights though makes me sooooo happy in comparison, it’s a bit mad really. Clearly with my body shape I’m built for strength, not for speed! I’ll get back to tri one day, but right now it isn’t my priority.

So, in terms of progress I can definitely feel the benefits of getting back into the gym. I can feel my shape changing a little, and although the scales are not budging at the moment, i’m not stressing about it.  The weight loss (i.e. fat loss) will come eventually, but right now I’m happy to be exercising consistently, sleeping better (extra hour a night on average), eating better and generally just feeling pretty great in myself.  I feel stronger too and my attempts at learning to do a full proper press-up are improving.  Today I got a new journal to record my training, nutrition, goals, sleep etc., and happily it lasts for 12 weeks, which will take me up to my birthday. So with that in mind I need to go take some measurements, fill in the front bit then get myself down the gym 😊

Have a great weekend folks x

So where the bloody hell has the last week gone? It was there, right in front of me, waiting to be lived then WHOOSH.  Gone.  Oh well! So not a whole hell of a lot has happened in the last week, but in a bid to keep on top of my plans and in an effort to keep progressing forward, I’ve set a few little goals and challenges to try and ensure I make the progress I want.

I know when I try to do a bazillion things at once I effectively do hee haw, so this is a fairly short list, and includes stuff I’m already doing but want to maintain and build on to keep me on the straight and narrow. It doesn’t even matter if no-one reads this (this is a fairly dull post, I’ll say that much), but if I write these hings down it helps me to be accountable. So here are my goals:

1. Sort food planning/prep for the week each weekend (stops me eating shit basically)
2. PT sesh plus two other gym sessions per week minimum (on it already)
3. Run once a week minimum (on it sometimes (rarely) so want to build on this!)
4. Keep on with press-up challenge (just started in a bid to work up to doing full press-ups)
5. Aim for 1.5lbs per week (average) weight loss (really it’s fat loss I’m interested in but this measurement will do for now in terms of aiming for something)
6. Get my sleep average up from 6.0/6.5 to 7.5 hours a night (I’m tired.  Need more sleep)

So that’s it. Nothing ground breaking but once I start to nail these consistently I can refine them and hopefully report on good progress.

😊

It’s been a wee while since I’ve written anything, partly because I didnt have much to say but also because I’ve been really busy.  The past few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind of weekends away and busy weeks in between, but finally life has started to calm down.  I’ve realised, or at least the past month or so has confirmed to me, that I absolutely SUCK at trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle when I’m busy.  Planning goes out the window, so do good food choices, invariably a lot of booze is consumed and the scales don’t thank me.  That said, I don’t regret the decisions I’ve made of late (food, booze or otherwise), because regret is pretty pointless.  I’ve been getting some personal training which I’m really loving, and getting to the gym a couple more times a week too, and feel soooo much better for it.  I’m making some strength gains which is great, but fat loss is eluding me – you can’t out train a bad diet, and I know that.  As I say though, regret is for losers, so no point worrying about what has been.  Instead, I’m looking forward to the next 4 week training block with more focus and determination, an understanding of where I need to improve and a plan to address it.  Progress will be made, and I’ll post an update with the results in a month.

So diet and training aside, what have I learned in the last few weeks? Well, I can honestly say that it has just been such a manic time, I feel like loads of things have come to a head.  Anyone that knows me knows I love my holidays and little breaks, and if you consider that since June I’ve been on trips to Doha, Italy, Cornwall, Nottingham (obviously the most glamourous of the lot!), as well as a couple of long weekends at home means that I’ve been pretty happy.  The reason why all that was so fabulous was not just because of the destination (e.g. it absolutely PISSED down in Nottingham, and I was camping!), but because of the people I spent time with.  I’ve been soooo lucky to meet up with a HUGE number of amazing friends, from Uni days and my Edinburgh life to running friends and all the Pirates (triathlon nutters to the unaware), and other friends old and new.  Time spent with friends is the happiest time of all I think 😊

The flip side of being so busy and catching up with people who are very important in my life, even if I don’t see them as much as I would like is that when the weekends are over, it is easy to hit a bit of a downer! Like post-event blues.  Also it kind of highlighted that sometimes it sucks to have no-one to come home to, to dissect the weekend with and re-hash all the laughs with. That, coupled with some really busy weeks meant my stress levels felt like they were going through the roof. Funnily enough though it all culminated with my car breaking down on the motorway as I drove East to pick up a friend.  Long story sort the car was fucked and i’ve now got a new one which I love! You’d think that the car dying would have sent my stress levels over the edge, but actually I don’t think I could have been calmer when it happened! I just realised that shit happens, so what is the point of stressing about it? It was a bit of a wake-up call to be honest. Since then, i’ve spent a lot of time just thinking about stuff and getting my head sorted.  While I still don’t have anyone to come home to, I have a lot of people in my life I love very much, and that’s more important to me.  Also getting myself the life I want in terms of health and fitness is so important to me now that actually that is the only thing I want to focus on this year.  I want to be really content in myself before I worry about finding a man to come home to, and looking for that will just take my focus off my goal right now. That whole vomit-inducing cliché of loving yourself before loving anyone else has never been more apt, so that’s the plan. Unless of course Tom Cruise happens to read this – I’ll give up the gym for you baby (I won’t really but you can come with me Tom).

So 99 days until the big 4-0.  Feeling good, stress levels reduced, focussing on the right things and looking forward to finally being able to post some progress in the next 4 weeks. ….and now that I’ve typed that, I can’t let myself down!

Thanks for reading.

Pea x😊

Okay, so the title may contravene the Trade Descriptions Act in every respect possible, but it is staying. Reading this post may not in fact lead you to rainbow-backdropped, bird-tweeting, firework-exploding, springy-stepped joy, but, well, you never know, it might….? (It won’t).  Anyway, since my last waffle (well, second-last) was about death, I thought I’d cheer things up a bit and talk about how to be happy.  Hurrah!!  Or at least happy in Pea world, which, lets face it, is possibly something not to try to emulate, but here it goes.  Btw this is akin to War & Peace in length (but a lot less accomplished) so grab a brew or save yourself now and go and watch some paint dry.

I remember years ago when I was in a job I wasn’t that happy with, and just generally feeling stuck in the world’s greatest rut (think Grand Canyon but bigger), I was aimlessly googling things like ‘How do I make myself happy?’.  I even clicked the daring ‘I’m feeling lucky!’ button, but lo-and-behold, happiness did not come pouring out the monitor at me, no matter how hard I tried.  Finally, however, I stumbled upon an internet quiz, and as we all know, they are VERY accurate (accurate enough to be deserving of CAPS LOCK in fact!).  So this quiz, this answer to my prayers, this portal to a life of unbridled joy and excitement, took a fecking AGE to complete.  It went into every aspect of life you could imagine – work, home, social life, relationships, future expectations, etc. etc. etc.  It took about 3 days to complete (i.e. about 30 mins, which, for an internet quiz may as well be 3 days.  That is looooooong).  It promised a lot.  As I nervously pressed the SUBMIT button, I couldn’t help but wonder what life-changing advice was awaiting me in the results.  Would it suggest a new career path?  Would it give me the phone number, address and inside leg measurement of some lovely man, to resolve my relationship issues?  Would it?  NO, it bloody would not, as it turns out.  Having spent what felt like an ETERNITY (shift key is getting a beasting tonight) filling out the bloody questionnaire, THIS is what the results told me (I’ll paraphrase):

If you think you need something tangible to be happy – job, house, partner – you’re wrong.  You cannot attain happiness by seeking to fill your world with tangible items that you could lose at any time.

What the ACTUAL F*$! is this I screamed????  I shit you not.  The whole point of the quiz was to make it (brutally) clear that  the old pre-conceived assumption that happiness will be yours the minute you stumble upon the ideal job/house/ boyfriend/holiday etc. is in actual fact total and utter bollocks.  DAMN YOU INTERNET QUIZ!!!! *shakes fist wildly at the monitor*.

Funnily enough though, as frustrating as it was, I knew it was telling me what I needed to hear.  Maybe it’s just me, but I always found it easy to assume that when something wasn’t right in my life, well I could fix it by getting that guy, or getting a job I enjoyed, or a nice place to live etc.  That’s all well and good, but if you base your happiness on things that can be taken away at the drop of a hat – a failed relationship, sudden job cuts, feck I’ve burned the house down!!! – then you’ll never be happy.  What if it gets snatched away? So as much as I would have happily put my fist through the screen at the end of that quiz, I was actually quite grateful.  I was secretly impressed by the audacity of the quiz writers to reel me in then   basically give me a slap and tell me to stop trying to sort my life out using an internet quiz.

So, I hear you cry, have I since been miserable and bereft of any shred of happiness since then?  No, not at all.  It did actually get me thinking about what happiness means for me, so in a sec I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered I need to be happy.  They are all concepts I think are important, and I’ve learned to put into practice over the last couple of years.  Of course sometimes happiness eludes me too and I get just as pissed off and upset about stuff as the next person, but overall, in the main, I know I’m happy, and I’m very grateful to be so.  So, here are the 3* easy steps to happiness, in no particular order.

* there are more than 3, but much like the peddler of some miracle diet cure, I’ve lied about how easy it is to be truly happy. Suck it up.

Stop to smell the roses

I do this a lot, and I mean it in a literal sense.  I love roses, and can often be found sniffing them at any opportunity.  Trying to casually stick your face in a rose-bush whilst walking along and not getting a thorn in your eye/a bee up your snout is something I’m quite adept at.  Of course in the general sense, taking time out of your day to stop and recognise the natural beauty that is all around is can help prod you along the path to happiness.  Or even just pausing to think about nothing.  How often do we do that?  Not enough.  ‘Mindfulness’ is something you’ll no doubt have heard about recently, as it is becoming more are more popular.  We all need to take time out of our busy lives to relax, reset and chill out without any distractions.  Watching clouds is a good one.  I love clouds.

Be resilient

This is the easy one on the list.  Just be resilient.  Done.  NEXT!  Yeah, okay, this is probably the hardest things to do, but it can be cultivated.  You can learn to take some knocks and keep going.  The more you work on it, the easier it becomes.  That initial soul-crushing blow that takes the feet from under you becomes more of a shove the next time, and so on.  I heard someone say once a good way to see how resilient someone is, is to watch what happens when an airline loses their bag after a flight.  Of course I read that after it had happened to me, when I had completely lost the plot and was utterly enraged.  I got the bag eventually, and it was no big deal in the scheme of things, but I did not deal with it well.  Big, fat zero on the resilience front.  Of course I know that sounds really trite when you could say ‘well what about being resilient when your heart is broken or someone’s just died?!’.  Yeah, bit more of an issue than a lost bag, but at the end of the day, I think you can take all the little knocks in life, learn from them, get through them and use those little bits of strength to get you though the bigger stuff.  It won’t happen overnight, and you must keep working at it.  Life isn’t fair, and it will suck at times, but having that resilience makes life easier, and ultimately is needed in order to be happier.

Learn to love yourself

I know, it sounds really wanky, but you have to be happy with yourself, or how the hell can you be happy in life in general?  It just doesn’t equate.  I don’t think being happy with yourself means that there is nothing you would change, and that you think you’re perfect, rather it is about being content despite some of the bits of yourself you wish were different.  Again, this can come down to resilience.  When I was a teenager I had loads of folk at school tell me I was fat and ugly, and of course it gets to you.  However, if someone said that to me now, they’d get two fingers from me (at the very least), but it wouldn’t make me question my self-worth; it says more about them than me anyway.  I’m much happier in myself, and it is only because of this that I feel like I’m in the right place to sort my shit out (i.e. get back to the gym, healthier lifestyle etc. etc.).  This for me is a big one on the ‘how to be happy’ list.

Let go of the past

You can’t change the past (‘well done Pea, another mind-blowing observation!’ I hear you cry), but it can hang like a weight around your neck and drag you down.  Wouldn’t it be nicer to let that weight go and just move on?  Of course it would.  So review the past, acknowledge it, take what you can, leave what you don’t need and move on down the shiny path to eternal happiness.  Easy.

Eat well, move a lot

Stop nose-bagging like a Clydesdale and go out for a walk.  Simple 😉

(I know I have a real cheek saying this, but it is my pointless blog so I’ll say what I like!  On the plus side I’m not chomping on a Mars Bar as I type.  Progress)

Do things for others

Giving your time, experience, ear, a hand, compassion, support etc. to others will give you more than it takes out of you.  Pay it forward when you can, because you know at some point you’ll be the one asking for help, guaranteed.  Life sucks at times and we can’t get through it on our own all the time.  Often we really need to be selfish** and put ourselves first – we need to be mentally strong to get through life at times, and that shouldn’t be at the expense of helping others first – but when you’ve got time to spend on someone/something other than yourself, be it 10 mins or 10 days, do it.  It will make you happy.

** I should say that I don’t think taking time out for yourself is selfish, in the strict sense of the word, but you know what I mean…..

Talk

Talk to friends, talk to family, talk to anyone who will listen.  Talk about the good stuff and laugh until you cry.  Whatever you do though, don’t push away the bad stuff, you need to talk about it too.  I’m a big believer that you can’t move on from painful experiences or thoughts if you keep them in your head.  Some experiences you can never get over, but you can learn to live with them, but even that won’t happen if you bottle everything up.  Trying to be falsely positive doesn’t work either, so don’t be deterred by someone trying to cheer you up or say ‘Oh it will all be fine!’.  You need to offload.

Learn stuff

I love learning.  Clearly learning to write a succinct blog post isn’t high on my list of stuff to learn, but hey…  Given half a chance (read: lottery win), I would be an eternal student.  Our world is so vast and amazing, there is just soooooo much to learn.  Finding out new things makes me happy, even if it is some random, pointless bit of information that is fascinating but I’ll never need to use.  Learning stuff expands our horizons and opens up a little bit more of the world to us.  Learning isn’t all about books (as much as I love them), for me it is also about talking to people about their lives, visiting places, trying new things.   How can that not make you happy?

Embrace Failure

Generally I used to suck at this, but I’m learning to embrace my failures.  I used to think of every failure as a complete and utter disaster, and would use this to berate myself at every opportunity.  What a big fat waste of my time that was.  Screwing something up but learning from it and using it to do better next time is so liberating.  It’s like admitting ‘this is who I really am.  I make mistakes.  Get over it’.  Admitting this to yourself is the hardest part; once you can do that you can admit it to others and feel okay about it (see the ‘resilience’ bit, also the ‘letting go’ bit).

Rise to the challenge

By this I mean the really important stuff like:

Getting your ATM card out the machine before it starts to beep.  Beating the SatNav. Fast forwarding through the adverts and stopping at the EXACT moment the programme starts again, not 1s late or early.  Trying to listen to an entire song you love without singing along – sooo difficult.  Eating a Creme Egg in one.  Actually, that’s not a challenge (insert giant piggy smiley).

So there you go, do all that and eternal happiness shall be yours.  Promise.  Failing that, just do a random internet quiz.  It is bound to give you much better advice than I ever could.

🙂

Since the whole point of me waffling on ad nauseam in this blog is to make myself accountable, I thought I’d better post a wee update.  To be fair I don’t actually have that much to say (don’t all cheer at once), but I’m creeping ever forwards.  Or upwards.  Or somewhere anyway.

So here we go.  On the progress front, so far this year (despite going up and down like the proverbial yo-yo), I’m on the downward trend and I’ve lost 9lbs all in.  I’ve just started with a new PT this week, so looking forward to cracking into some hard graft next week (and yes, I know I shall rue the day I typed this when I can’t move without crying next week).  Cycling to work is still happening, albeit not so much this week since I’ve had to drive here there and everywhere straight from work 4 days this week.  So that’s a bit annoying, but I’m cycling in again tomorrow.  I did my first Parkrun for 5 years a couple of weeks ago, and I’ll be there on Saturday lumbering along Southsea parade again, so looking forward to that. Finally, I’ve started another plan with Fitter Food, to get me back on the straight and narrow.  I’ve used them before and felt AMAZING so looking forward to getting back to that point.  While a lot of it is about food (basically canning the processed crap, eating good proteins, fats and carbs to fuel your body), more so it is about cultivating good habits that you can sustain for life: moving more daily, sleeping more (yay to more time spent in my comfy bed!), reducing stress, being mindful etc.  What it isn’t is a ‘diet’, i.e. something you do to lose weight before resuming ‘normal’ life (whatever that is), and piling all the weight back on, plus a bit more for good measure.  My aim in all of this is ultimately to lose weight, but more so to just be fit, strong and healthy.  When I achieve that, the weight will sort itself out.

Oh yeah, and I’ve given up my telly.  Well, I say that – I was expecting it to be switched off the other day, but the subscription is still coming through.  Anyway, it’ll be gone by month end at the latest, and I can get rid of the TV altogether.  So anyone coming to stay will actually need to talk to me.  Sorry in advance about that.  On the plus side this means I can sing to visitors to keep them entertained.  If I’ve had a few vinos I may even dance a bit too.  Don’t all rush to visit at once now 🙂

Nothing like a cheery blog post on a Thursday night 🙂  I thought I’d go straight for the jugular, although not literally, otherwise this post would be called murder.  I guess this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately (death, not murder).  Today for example, my eldest wee niece turned 18 (Happy birthday!) which is wonderful, but I think about my Mum and the fact she never got to meet either of my fabulous nieces, and I know how much she would have absolutely loved them both to bits.  So that is sad, but at the same time that’s just the way things go, and today is about celebration of life passing, which is more important.  So as much as this post is about death, actually the whole reason I’ve been thinking about it so much is because what I’m really thinking about is life.  Granted, ‘Life’ would have been a more catchy, happier title, but I like the dark side of life, so I went for the alternative.

I was lucky enough the other day to get the chance to catch up with a lovely friend I’ve not seen for nearly a year, and she asked me how I was feeling about turning 40.  I was immediately about to say ‘fine!’ but then caught myself, as that’s not strictly true.  As one day passes into the next, I swing from not being bothered at all, to wondering where the hell my life has gone, and OH DEAR GOD CAN SOMEONE PLEASE STOP THE CLOCK!!!!!  Today I’m in a ‘not bothered yet contemplative’ phase.  Honestly.

The upsides of course are that I genuinely feel a lot more comfortable in myself, and feel like I don’t need to pretend to be someone I’m not.  I’m a very visual person, and I know I’ve talked before about seeing myself in a bubble, on my own, with everyone else in their own bubbles, yet with others in there with them.  Now it feels as though the bubble has burst (without liquefying me, hurrah!), and actually I feel pretty open now to things I’d maybe closed myself off from before, or protected myself from, even if it wasn’t a conscious decision.  I’ve started to let go of a lot of the physical, material crap that I’ve hauled around with me for years, because it suddenly isn’t very important to me anymore.  What is important to me are my family and my friends.  I know I don’t spend enough time with either, but this is something I’m trying to rectify.  Looking after myself is also really important, and I’ve neglected to do that for a loooooong time, which is why I’m knocking my fifth decade on earth as fat as i’ve ever been (well, a wee bit lighter than that now, but still…. (insert pig smiley)).

So as much as I often think of death (possibly the result of starting to read crime fiction from the age of 12 when my Mum suggested I might like Ed McBain’s ‘Poison’, just out in hardback.  Needless to say I loved it and he has remained one of my favourite authors throughout my life.  Thanks Mum!!), I do so because it makes me appreciate the life I lead.  I’ve been so lucky, and done so much with my life.  I have a fabulous family, and luckily a lot of amazing friends (they say friends are the family you choose for yourself.  Can’t disagree).  I’m more conscious recently though that I feel like I’ve really dodged a lot of bullets in my life, and maybe shouldn’t have the health I do considering how little I’ve looked after myself.  I think it worries me that I’ve left it too late, and despite best efforts I won’t be able to stem the tide rushing towards me anymore.  Ridiculously, now that I have actually started taking some action, I feel more worried about being too late than I did when I was doing nothing!  I am an idiot though, so this is just the sort of thing I’d worry about.  It’s as though I’ve just suddenly cottoned on that life is the most amazing privilege there is, and wasting it is practically a sin.  I can’t say I’ve wasted my life so far, not at all, but I’m determined to make the most of what is left.  Let’s hope there is a lot of life left, but who knows.

To me, thinking about death doesn’t fill me with fear, it gives me purpose.  Stops me from taking too much for granted.  Reminds me of my place in this great big world.  I find it comforting!  I’m still a total wuss and the thought of physically hurting myself fills me with dread, but I don’t worry about it all ending.  What’s the point?  I won’t be here.

Anyway, onwards and upwards.  Next week I start some personal training again, so looking forward to that.  I’m loving my cycle commute to work, and I’m so glad I’ve started that now, and plan to keep it going.  Next week my TV is also getting cut off.  In typical me fashion, I’ve swithered about getting shot of my telly for MONTHS but wasn’t sure if it was a good idea.  However, in a fit of enthusiasm I called BT last week and told them to can my £5pm month TV package, because I didn’t need it!  The guy must have asked about 10 times if I was sure, but I vowed I didn’t need telly in my life.  Of course about 5 minutes after hanging up I was wondering what the fuck I’d done, but I’ve managed not to call back in a fit of panic to tell them I was just having a mental break.  I may need to go and paint the odd wall in the flat, just so I can watch it dry, but I’m hoping that actually it will encourage me to get out and do other things, like exercise, catching up with pals etc., or even just read more, as I’m slacking on that front at the mo.  So if anyone wants to buy a telly, let me know!

I’d keep waffling on, but I’ve got some TV to catch up on before next week!  If you’ve got this far, please collect your (non-existent) medal and go drink some wine.  I fully intend to.

🙂

Those of you that know me will know that I am never (i.e. frequently) prone to exaggeration, so while the title of this post may seem dramatic, it is true.  I am indeed determined to get fit or die trying (to be fair I don’t really want to die trying, but the existing title is more catchy).  So as a result, I have slowly managed to drag my ass off the couch and start moving.  Thanks to a bit of gentle persuasion from a good friend, I’ve started cycling to work on days I don’t need to drive straight into town into work, and I have to say I’m really enjoying it.  It is only a mere 5 miles return, so yes, I do feel slightly (very) ashamed that I didn’t actually start doing this earlier, but hey ho, I’m on it now.  I should be able to cycle commute 4 out of 5 days, bar random stuff cropping up, so that’s quite good.  Not much, but better than hee-haw.

I also managed to get myself along to a Parkrun for the first time in FIVE years (I know, even sloths have more go about them) on Saturday, and despite my quads disowning me, not having run for months and months and months, I really loved it.  The run (5K for those not in the know) takes you along Southsea promenade, so it is definitely a 5K with a view.  The volunteers are all lovely and friendly and very welcoming, so I’ll be there this weekend (just to help this time as need to shoot off straight after), but will definitely run it again.

Also, in a bid to save some cash, and get motivated for the gym again, I’ve resigned from my posh (read: expensive) gym , and signed up for a new one which is half the price, and full of guys whose shoulder muscles would give my thighs a run for their money (I shit you not).  I’ve arranged to start seeing a personal trainer again, so first session is on Tuesday next week.  Really looking forward to lifting weights again, doing some high intensity interval stuff and getting my ass kicked.  There is nothing like the feeling that your lungs are about to explode to make you feel good about yourself.  I do love the gym, but struggle to motivate myself, so a bit of PT will do me the world of good.

Finally I’m a couple of weeks into a ‘Million Step Challenge’ and pretty much on target.  The aim is to cover 10,000 steps a day for 100 days, and it was all going swimmingly until I was dragged to the Middle East, taken to the desert, made to sit in the sea and drink gallons of gin (all against my will of course).  It appears that lounging around quaffing the nectar of the Gods does not make for a high step count. So my daily average suffered a bit, but I’m very nearly back on track.

So that’s it really.  I thought I’d post what I’m up to and what my plans are so that I can remain accountable, which was the whole point of this blog (but I’ve been a bit shit at that part!).  I have to say I’m definitely feeling the better for getting moving again.  That run on Saturday really made me see how much fitness I’ve lost, but I’m looking forward to not only getting back to where I was, but totally smashing it and being fitter than I’ve ever been.

I shall report back on progress soon 🙂

I know I’ve said this before, but I find it really uncanny that when you start to think about something, it seems to appear everywhere.  In conversations, books read, articles emailed to me, you name it, and the same themes keep appearing.  I talked (waffled) recently about identity and confidence, and for me (everyone?) they’re so closely interlinked that sometimes it can be difficult to separate the influence of one from the other.  Another theme I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is risk.

Maybe some people wouldn’t categorise this as ‘risk’ per se, but through some random pusbook clicking I came across a couple of speeches about confidence and acceptance that two women (an actress and a comedian) had given at a gala that was celebrating people and companies that empower and support women (as I get older I’m only one bra-burn away from becoming a militant feminist I think).  While the speeches came from a different angle, they were both very frank, unflinchingly honest, funny and moving.  I think being so honest is risky in itself.  What if it backfires?  Is being proud of who you are, and being willing to stand up for that despite what anyone else thinks the equivalent of taking a ‘risk’? Maybe, maybe not.  I’m not actually sure.

When I think of taking risks, I think about skydiving or flying or rock climbing or bungee jumping – something that, if it goes wrong, means that more than likely, you’re pretty much fucked. Sayonara bitches! Although of course most of us would get in a car everyday of our lives, and that is way risky (statistically, in comparison to flying, say), but most of us wouldn’t give it a second thought.  We cram crappy food and booze and cigarettes and drugs in our bodies yet often don’t think (care?) of the cumulative risks of doing so.  These things could just as easily shorten our lives, but when the impact isn’t so instant, it can be easy to forget we’re taking a risk.  We normalise it and thus de-risk it.

I am quite a morbid person in some ways, and I think about life and death a lot. I’m not afraid of death – I know we all die some point, but to be honest I just think of it as something that will happen in the future. As time passes and I get older it makes me question what is important to me, and what I still want to achieve. I want to see more of the world, I want to feel like I’ve made a difference within it. I know just by being a westerner and therefore wealthy compared to millions of others on the planet, I’ve taken out more than I’ve put in, so to speak. I can’t imagine doing anything that I’ll be remembered for, but at the same time I want to feel as though I’ve done something worthwhile.  Of course there is always the option of taking the risk of quitting my job and secure life to go and ‘make a difference’, either in a part of the world that doesn’t have the same luxuries as we do, such as democracy, health care, justice etc., or even closer to home to work for eff all money and take a socially responsible job.  Then again, is that ‘taking a risk’ or just ‘being selfish’?  I think probably both, to an extent, and if so, maybe there is nothing wrong with that? Or maybe there’s a lot wrong with it.  You see, I’m not actually sure about this either!

Yesterday I watched video online where they aged a young couple in their 20s who are about to get married so they could see what they may both look like when they reach 50/60/90 years of age. Their reactions were so sweet, but to be honest my immediate thought was: what if you saw yourself that age but you never made it there.  What if you saw what you’d potentially look like at 80 but didn’t live past 60?! How mind-blowing would that be?!  I’ll be 40 this year, and my Mum died when she was 54. What if I only have 14 years left?!  FUCK!!

I guess the whole point of this very random, probably incoherent, and frankly nonsensical post is that ultimately, I think there is no time to waste, even though more often than not, I’ve been living like there is plenty of time to waste. There is so much still to do. Risks to take, lessons to learn.

But here is the kicker: why does it often feel easier to take physical risks (driving, flying, eating shite, skydiving etc. etc.), where the consequences could be fatal, but it isn’t so easy to take emotional risks?  I guess it is because you can stitch up a cut, and bones heal, but emotional pain is hard to heal.  Where do you even start?  I’m sure someone far more clever  than me (which is pretty much anyone right now, seeing as this post probably makes no sense whatsoever) has done a lot of research on this, and can give you actual evidence, but my view is that the payout from taking an emotional risk is much higher in the long run than it is for a physical risk.  Adrenaline spikes when you jump out of an aircraft, hurtling towards the earth with only some silk to save you, but that adrenaline passes (especially of the chute doesn’t open), and you need to keep doing death-defying feats to get the same buzz.  When you take an emotional risk and it pays off, then you could have years of happiness, potentially.  Even if it doesn’t work out, then you can learn from it, and grow, and the benefits of that can keep you going for a while.  So why it is so difficult?  I guess it is easier to stay snuggled up in the safety blanket of the ‘known’, than toss it aside, and risk freezing to death without it.  It’s like running through a door when you can’t see what’s on the other side, and you’re hoping against hope that there’s a road on the other side, and not a bloody cliff, except you’re not allowed to have a peak first.

Anyone that has actually gotten to this part of the post deserves a medal, so thanks, but you may also now be waiting for the big reveal about the risk i’m wondering whether I should take or not. Well, sorry, it isn’t coming.  I can’t really say what i’m thinking about, that would be too risky 😉   Actually it isn’t that, more that I just have all these random thoughts in my head, taking up too much room that i’d rather fill with, oh, I don’t know, gin!  I’ve had such amazing responses from people from my last few posts, often saying that they felt the same way, so I guess I just wondered if i’m the only nutter out there that thinks these things too?  Answers on a postcard.  If it is a resounding ‘yes!’ i’ll just go for a nice drive.  Much less risky 🙂

T-186.

Six months and 1 day until I’m no longer in my thirties.  Oh. Dear. GOD.  How did this happen?!  WHY OH WHY OH WHY has time started to speed up?  Arggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg.

So I was driving home from work today, wondering what the date was before realising it was nearly the 13th, and oh, let me work out how many months it is until the big four-oh?  Eight, it must be, surely? What month’s this again? Oh bollocks….  Six months to go.  FFS.  I remember thinking on my last birthday that I had a year to sort my shit out, and 6 bleeding months have zoomed by, and I’ve not exactly sorted my shit out.  DAMMIT.

I feel like one of those ditzy horror film girls that is trying to outrun her machete-wielding attacker.  Of course she always has massive knockers (got those!), blond hair (hmm, I did once) and a 12″ waist (yeah okay, bugger off….) and a look of unbridled terror (check!).  You know she’s gonna get it, especially since she’s inevitably going to fall over a tree branch and get dragged off by the ankles to her blood-soaked doom.  Christ, I even tripped up a kerb myself last weekend and went flying.  At least a serial killer wasn’t in pursuit.  Small mercies, eh?

So, having finished off sorting out my flat (which is still more spacious and tidy – I’ve not reverted to type, hurrah!), I’d started planning in some goals for the year.  I drift about aimlessly (read: sit on the couch and expand) if I don’t set some clear goals, I’d already planned in two 10K races (Oct. and Dec.) but I’ve added another one in August, so training plan for that starts at the end of June.  Need to lose some timber before I start running in earnest too.  I’ve got a big weight loss goal, but I’m not putting that up here.  I want to focus on other stuff in terms of this blog (at the moment).  So here’s what I’ve got so far:

1. Complete the Million Step Challenge for 2015.  This starts next Monday, and it is basically walking 10K steps a day for 100 days.  I did this last year and achieved the target, so going to do it again.

2. Exercise 3 times a week (over and above steps of course)

3. Deadlift 100kg by the end of the year.  Actually I know I can definitely lift more in time, but I’m setting this as my initial goal.  I got to 80Kg last year, and know I can get to 100kg.  Ultimately I want to get to 1.5 x bodyweight, so feck me I best lose some first or my arms might snap off, and my glutes will implode.

4. Do 10 Parkruns by the end of the year.  I NEVER make it to Parkrun, but it’s a great thing to do, so thanks to BriTriSki for this goal!

5. Run a sub-60 10K.  This is slow for lots of folk, but I’m an utter sloth when it comes to running, and would be a big PB, so I’m hoping by the Christmas 10K on 13th Dec.  I can achieve this.  Might as well push the boat out, goal wise.  I think my 10K PB is 1:08, and that was a few years ago!

6. Walk and/or cycle to work as much as possible.  I shouldn’t really be driving, to be fair, so when I don’t need to go straight into town/gym after work, I can cycle or walk in.

So that’s it so far.  Plenty to be getting on with.  My weight goal is pretty big, but bugger it, it can be done.  I’m already getting back into the Fitter Food way of eating, which I’ve mentioned before.  It’s essentially Paleo, but also so much more about general health and well-being, including moving more generally, sleep, stress management etc. etc.  I felt sooooooo good when I was properly on it last year, I know it works for me, so that’s what I’m doing.  I’m also getting my cholesterol checked.  I’ve not done that for a few years, and I know it went down when I lost weight before, so I want a starting benchmark.

I shall report back on progress made in a couple of weeks 🙂

All hand on deck now!

So lately I’ve been slightly list-obsessed.  I downloaded a brilliant app that lets you create loads of individual lists and assign each one a little picture to identify them.  Once you’ve done something on the list, the app moves the item below the ‘Completed’ line; this is WAY more satisfying than it should be.  I shouldn’t get as excited as I do, but there you go.  As I mentioned in my last post, I’d already started ticking stuff off the list, and happily I can report that it is now down to 10 items remaining! Hurrah!  As a result, my flat is a LOT more tidy, and full of less crap.  I actually have floor space that I’m not sure what to do with, but rest assured I have no desires to fill it up with more rubbish.  It is amazingly cathartic to get rid of stuff you’ve been holding on to your years; it literally feels like a weight off my shoulders.

I wanted to get most of it done before the weekend, as I knew I’d be going up north to see lots of triathlon friends and support them all doing a half Ironman.  The infamous DIY Pirate Half IM was a roaring success, and spirits weren’t dampened by the intermittent rain and howling winds that popped up over the two days.  One year I may actually do the thing, hahaha.  In fact, it brought it home to me how little I’ve done, exercise wise, in the last 12 months.  I was reminded that exactly 1 year ago I’d said that I was going to sort my life out, get fit etc. etc. etc., and in May 2015, I’d do the race along with the others, for a change.  Oops.  Oh well, I am where I am.  However, part of the reason for having a big clear out was so that I’d finally have no more excuses for being a lazy bee-atch, and if I’d sorted all the other things I wanted to change in my life, then I’d have no reason not to sort the one remaining thing that has eluded me all these years – sorting my fat ass out.  It was so much fun this weekend, and the best bit was watching everyone achieve their goals, and do their best despite the rain and wind and cold.  Also my back was really killing me from standing all day on Saturday, which is RIDICULOUS because I’m not 100 years old, but my body may disagree with that at the moment.  When I was doing lots of deadlifting and weights, my back was soooo much better, mainly because I actually had some core strength.  Sadly my core is currently like that of a donut:  non-existent.  Anyone reading this that has read all the other shite I’ve spewed in the past with be getting the world’s strongest feeling of deja vu at the moment, and honestly, so am I.  I know I’ve said this a bazillion times before, but I’m determined to sort my shit out!  To that end, today’s bank holiday was spent shopping for food so I could batch cook stuff for the week, to ensure I’m taking lunch to work instead of buying it.  I’ve started tracking my food again, which really helps (My Fitness Pal is awesome), and I’m not taking any money to work so I can’t buy crap!  Now that most of my list is complete (the remaining 10 things are not particularly urgent or important), I can start to plan some goals for the year in terms of exercise.  I’ve got a couple of 10Ks planned for October and December, but I want to have stuff to work towards before then.  I’ll post them up here when I’ve worked them out so people can shoot me if I don’t actually do them!

I do have one long-term goal to look forward to though.  For the past few years, I’ve put my name into the ballot for the Chicago Marathon, and i’ve never been successful – until now!  I actually got in this year, although I’ll not be in a position to run it (physically or financially!), so I’m going to defer it to 2016.  Unfortunately that means paying the entry fee twice, but I think it will be worth it.  I spent a week in Chicago in 2002, before I headed to Australia for the year, and I absolutely fell in love with the city.  It is AMAZING.  I’ve not made it back there since, but now I have good reason to go back 🙂  Here’s the course map from last year:

Jeez that does look like it’s a long way!  Anyhoo, plenty of time to get ready 🙂  It is good to have a focus, even if it is longer term.  Now just to work on the medium and short term.  Watch this space….