The pet picture roll

Introducing Grace...

And Caspar...

And both together last night, a lot more grown up and relaxing on my lap in front of the TV.

Here's Caspar giving me the finger lol

Finally, here are Bazil the Pug and Kali the German Shepherd, who live at Mum's place.

Quick update

I've been AWOL for a while, but all is well. I've just been uber-busy at work. When you work in a small office and someone is on extended sick leave... well, life gets hard. But I love the work, so I'm not complaining TOO much. A little less volume would be nice, but on the whole life is good.

In the non-working world, all has been going pretty well too. My running is coming along, although I am struggling a bit. Every run seems tough at the moment, so I think I've lost my rhythm a bit. I just need to keep plugging away at it and find my happy place again. Stats since I last checked in:

Saturday - 50 mins, 7.6km, avg pace 9.1km/hour. A fairly hilly course and I was smashed by the end of it. Long run day increases to an hour this Saturday, so I'm hoping it feels better.

Monday - speed work. 30 seconds @ 15km/hour, 1 minute standing recovery, 10 repeats. Speed work gets me every time, 30 seconds sounds like nothing but by the time I'm half way through the repeats I'm wondering if I might need to spew. Not good in any situation, but especially not in the gym. I survived with no such incidents though, thankfully.

Thursday - 30 mins, 4.6km, avg pace 9.4km/hour. My legs were a bit tight and fatigued from some strength work earlier in the week, and the last km of this run was torturous. Having said that, the first km was the slowest - it is all uphill, but only gradual inclines. I probably needed more of a warm up this morning, given the sore legs and cool atmosphere.

Outside of the running, I've bitten the bullet and joined the good gym. I've messed around with some cheaper ones in the last year or so, but it just doesn't work for me. The class timetables suck and the equipment isn't well maintained - there's a reason they're cheap. So I've joined at Goodlife, goodbye $910, but I did get away with no joining fee, no admin fee and a bonus month free. Still not cheap, but on the whole I don't think I did too badly. The gym has just been renovated, all the equipment is new and the group fitness timetable is pretty extensive. I've been for my initial trainer session and got a strength program written for me. They update these for you free of charge every 3 months. I'll give it a go, but I can't see myself sticking to it - there's stuff in there that I just know I won't do. For example, I HATE wall sits. Like, really hate them. I told her that, but she put them in anyway. They might be good for you, but I'm certain there are other exercises she could have substituted, given my views on this. I'll just change it around myself.

Casie - yes I do have some pics of the kittens, but I haven't uploaded them yet. I'll try to get to it on the weekend, I normally update my blog at work :)

Today's Run

4.1km, 26:39, 9.2km/hour

This was the same route I did on Monday. The first km, which trends slightly downhill, was really really hard. I was at 6:35 pace for the first km - I've been known to do that stretch in 5:55 (although admittedly when I knew I was taking the downhill route at the end of the road, not the massive uphill in the opposite direction as I was today, so I was deliberately holding some in reserve). I was quite scared of how I was going to cope with the big hills given the poor start, but I found my rhythm and got through pretty well. 6:45 and 6:38 for the next 2 km, which had some nasty nasty hills in them. The 4th km I did in 6:07, but that's down some very nice hills. What goes up, must come down!

There's a long road ahead to get my running fitness back, but as they say, the longest journey starts with a single step. That's enough philosophy for today, I've got a busy work day ahead. Happy running one and all.