Tired

I'm really struggling with the tired's again this week. This morning I felt like I literally could not drag myself out of bed. I'm super glad it's not a running day, because I seriously don't think I would have made it out there. I did eventually drag my sorry ass out of bed in time to cycle to work thankfully - but it was a long hard slog the whole way, which kinda sucks. Hopefully I'll snap out of this sometime soon. Oh, that just reminded me to take a multi vitamin - maybe I'm low on something. Can't do any harm, right?

Anyway, I think I left off on Saturday morning with my last post, after a great long run. I didn't achieve a whole lot else on Saturday really - I did manage to go and buy the curtain fabric with my mum, but that ended up taking hours. That's the problem with going home, I can never just pop in there, they won't let me leave the house. We spent about half an hour in Spotlight, then I spent 2 hours trying to escape the house after that.

Sunday was a busy one, but surprisingly productive for once. Up for the markets first thing (really really dark now. I got up early so I could make us some coffees to take with us, sit in the car and drink them while we waited for it to lighten up at least a little bit). I felt the need to bake, so I made a sultana cake for my Pa, and a batch of hot cross buns. They were good too - perhaps a little more spice, but otherwise a good recipe find. Someone at work has kindly volunteered to be the recipient of the next batch, so that will be a good offload of next weekend's baking :-)

After the baking expedition, I did a bit of gardening in the rain (as you do). One vegie patch has been fertilised and will be ready for planting in 6 weeks or so. I still haven't made any headway with doing the edging pavers on the other 3 patches though, damn it. I did clean the house from top to bottom and do piles of washing though, so that was a good effort. I also went to mum's early for dinner, and put the pug in the bath for her. He was one stinky pug, something to do with the fact that he decided to roll in cow poo fertiliser last week perhaps. He looks a completely different colour now, nice and cream instead of dirty brown. I also took the pug and the shep for a walk... and it started to rain 5 minutes after we set out. It was just my day to get wet I think. The pug has made great progress on his fitness too - he used to refuse to walk in the rain (he would just sit down and refuse to move, I had to carry him!) Now he loves a walk more than he hates the rain, so he just kept trotting on without seeming to notice the rain. Go pug!

Monday morning saw me out for a scheduled 4.8km "easy pace" run. My legs were really heavy from Saturday's run and it was a tough circuit. I haven't got my lap times on me (well the Garmin is 3 rooms away, which is clearly way too far), but I think the time was 30:34 for 4.8km. I felt every metre of that distance too. I nearly gave into the fatigued legs last night, but instead I sucked it up and went to Step at the gym for the first time in a few weeks. I got through that fine, which leads me to believe that the fatigue and soreness is probably more mental than physical. I just need to push through it and toughen up a bit I think.

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go...

zzz

A quick blog update and then off to bed with me, I'm stuffed today. I'll also need to be up bright and early tomorrow, I've got some work that has to get out first thing in the morning (damn it).

Last night I had my first Fresh Fitness session. I was very nervous going in, but the good news is I'm not the unfittest or the fattest there! It's quite a small group, only 10 of us (9 girls and 1 token guy). The trainer is really nice, a bit shy and hard to talk to, but then I'm like that too. It's a bit hard to tell from one session, but I think I'll enjoy my month of sessions in this group, just to mix it up for something different. We started out with a stretching session, then did some shuttle runs, and had to drop down to the ground and jump back up every time he blew the whistle, and then keep running. This was amazingly effective for getting the heart rate up. Next up was some sets of push ups, sit ups and squats. The third activity was walk/sprint intervals around the oval, and then a cool down. He has promised us more game type activities in future sessions, so I will be interested to see where it goes. At this stage there are 3 of us who show competitive instinct and are the front runners in the running activities. I think the guy will be too good for me, but I'll keep pacing myself with the other girl and use her as a motivation to push harder.

Today I cycled to and from work, and did a longer loop on the way home to make it up to a bit over 20km on the return journey. No flats for the second ride running, woo hoo! The bike feels so much better after the last tyre fix up, so I think it's been running rough for a while. Last week I burnt 677 calories on the way to work, this week 438! My cycling fitness has gone up a notch, particularly with the long ride on Saturday, but not that much in a week. It's good to have Matilda back in tip top shape.

The plan for the rest of the week... I won't get a chance to run tomorrow morning, as I'll need to be at work too early. I plan on running Thursday and Friday mornings though. I also have Fresh Fitness sessions Wednesday and Thursday nights. I haven't quite figured out a plan for the weekend yet, I'll play that by ear for now.

Be good kids.

HM plan & weekend round up

Greetings and salutations. A quick one today as I actually have quite a bit to do this afternoon!

Kylie has kindly rectified my current technology deficiency and explained how I can upload my HM training plan (thanks Kylie!) And so here it is.

Hopefully you can read that. If you can, any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I've been having fun on Buckeye Outdoor, starting to map out some runs for the appropriate distances, but I have just freaked myself out by discovering that the 12 week plan involves running over 300km. That's a lot of km. But I guess that's the idea.

As for the weekend roundup, I'm sort of feeling like I've come back to work this week to have a rest, the weekend was all go. Friday night I took home a pile of work and sat under my beautifully cool air conditioner and got into it. The air conditioning at work died on Thursday last week (and is still dead now, not happy Jan), so nice cool air was a blessing.

Saturday morning, I was up early for a big bike ride day with Kylie. I left home at 7.15 and met Kylie in town at 8am. We rode about 15km together around the city and parklands, nattering the whole way. We had some sustenance at the kiosk beside the Torrens, and surprisingly talked a bit more! We then went our separate ways to cycle home. All up I covered 45.6km for the morning, and had an awesome time.

Saturday afternoon involved all manner of dull house cleaning, cooking and garden type duties, followed by an evening at the basketball. It was a shocking game, sorry I bothered really.

On Sunday, I had my usual early start for the farmer's market. I did some more work around the house, and then had a visit from some people who bought some furniture I had sold on eBay - I'm so happy to have it out of the way (and the $100 wasn't bad either). I then went shopping with mum for a new washing machine for her at Harvey Norman, and some plants for me from Bunnings. The afternoon was spent cleaning out and reorganising the shed (which is now looking fabulous I might add), and planting some of my new stuff. Oh, and launching an attack on the shrubs out the front which have decided to take over my garden. Sunday night I went to mum's for roast pork... plus everything else under the sun that I raided from her cupboards and fridge. There is something about that house that just makes me want to gorge myself, I have got to break that habit dammit.

I've bought another online fitness voucher thing, and I have my first session booked in for tonight. As the day goes on I'm getting more and more nervous about it, I have to meet the trainer at 6.10 to go through some details, before the session starts at 6.30. It's an outdoors group training type thing, with a maximum of 15 people in attendance. What if everyone is a size 8 fit-freak? Bah. I'll be fine once I'm there, but I always hate these first sessions. Suck it up princess.

Back on the wagon

OK, so it's taken a while (a GOOD while), but I'm finally back into it. I can feel those cobwebs blowing out as we speak. Technically, I thought I was going to throw up those cobwebs as I ran up a nasty hill on my first run in weeks this morning... got to get rid of them somehow right!



So, where did I leave off on my last post? Oh, that's right, I was planning on going for a run on Tuesday night. Yep, that didn't happen. I went home and ate the rest of the brownie slice instead, oops. The good news is that the brownie slice is all gone, and so is the rest of the binge-inducing food from my house. I was looking around for a late night graze last night, and I couldn't find anything I wanted to eat, so I went to bed instead. Score.



Yesterday I had my first return to the work cycle commute. It was tough going - 670 calories burnt on the way to work, max heart rate 171 and I felt like I was chewing on my lungs going up a couple of hills. The way home was slightly easier, until I got another #$!% flat tyre... 3rd flat in as many rides, I'm getting seriously pissed about this now. I'm taking it to get fixed today, and I'll ask them to check the rims and see if they're damaged or anything while they're at it - the bike didn't feel smooth right from the start yesterday, sort of clunky, like the back wheel isn't completely round. That can't be good.



Today, I laid in bed with angel and devil on opposing shoulders, arguing about whether to get up and run or lay back and sloth. Surprisingly the get up and run angel won. I'm super happy to have that run under my belt now, a couple of hours after completion... but at the time, I was in a world of pain. Interestingly my legs held up well, I didn't feel any soreness at all while running (although I'm sure that will present itself later in the day). The struggle was simply cardiovascular fitness, and seriously burning lungs. Hopefully the fitness will pick back up very soon, with a bit of consistency.



This leads me nicely to my next topic. In a moment of insanity, I have decided to try to train for a half marathon this year. On the 1st of May in fact. I'm thinking I might be a bit short of time to get myself fit enough for this, but I'm going to try anyway and see what happens. I've downloaded a training program, and slightly modified it to suit me. I'd love to share it with you, but I can't figure out how to copy and paste my beautiful table into my blog, and I've just spat it after trying to do it about 5 different ways. If any of you lovely technologically advanced bloggers would like to share the secret with me, I'd be much obliged. Feeling seriously inadequate right now :(

After a very long absence...

I'm back, at very long last. It's been a while... a very long while. As anyone who has followed my blogging attempts in the past may know, when I go blog-AWOL, it's not a good sign - it usually means I've fallen fair and square off the wagon, started eating like a demon and being slothful on the exercise front. This time is no different really, except that it hasn't gone on as long as previous bouts, thankfully.

But I'm back into it now. I hadn't done any exercise since getting back from holidays until yesterday, but I went to step last night, and I rode my bike to work today. I just stood up to grab something from the other side of the room, and discovered that my legs have siezed up. Crap, looks like the ride home will be interesting. But that aside, I felt SO much better once I'd done step last night. I tried really really hard to talk myself out of going, but once I was in there I enjoyed every minute of it (it was a different instructor, and she was awesome, hope she sticks around). This is the problem with exercise, it's the getting started that's the problem, not the doing. And the longer I leave it, the more sloth-inclined I become. No more I say!

On the D&M side of things, I really need to work through what put me in my food and slothfulness funk this time around. On the whole, I think it was just me trying to eat my stress and emotions - nothing new there. Why I keep falling back to that counter-productive activity is beyond me, but I do it time and time again. Life has gotten on top of me, and I've bitten back by trying to eat it. WTF?

Now, the sources of the stresses, where do I start? In Bali I guess. There were some definite good points to the holiday - some good shopping, lots of good massages, and some much needed time away from the office. There were also some bad points - my Dad is incredibly hard work these days. Alzheimers is a bastard of an illness, and I don't think anyone can really appreciate just how difficult it is to deal with someone with that disease unless they've actually lived through it. If the person you were dealing with was a child (and a lot of the time they do behave exactly like naughty children), you could punish them to bring them into line. What the hell do you do with a 6'2" 110kg "child"? Get incredibly frustrated and wound up, that's what.

So that part of the trip was tough. The other thing from the Bali trip which has given me cause for stress since my return is actually a guy - who would have thought! Ketut is someone who I met in Bali a couple of trips back, and we've kept in contact through Facebook and text messages off and on over the last couple of years. He is completely not the sort of person I would have chosen for myself... and yet I really feel something for him. I expected to go there this time and see him, and have it feel like just a friend, the same as quite a few others I have gotten to know in my many trips. But it feels like something more. I didn't get to see a lot of him this trip, with my dad being demanding as he is and mum not coping well, but what I did see of him was great. I've been kinda depressed about it since getting back, trying to figure out what to do, whether to trust it or not etc etc etc. The problem with people from Bali (in a broad sweeping generalisation) is that they know how to flatter those from the western world to get what they want. I'm usually pretty good at seeing through that kind of thing, but everyone has their weaknesses, you know? So I don't know how Ketut sees me... as a partner, as a friend who flirts, or a ticket to a visa and a better life. How the hell do you really know? I guess I haven't really finished working through the options, but I'm leaning towards doing nothing with it at this stage. My life is already too complicated without adding a MASSIVE complication like this. But it is a shame.

What else is going on? Well, Christmas is going on. On the whole, I love Christmas, but it is becoming a major headache these days. It's always hectic, but my mother has had a mini meltdown this year (and last year, when I come to think of it), and that leaves me to pick up the pieces. I don't blame her at all, her life with my dad is monumentally sucky these days. I do, however, blame my selfish, useless, good-for-nothing brother, who does jack sh*t to help anyone other than himself. While I spent 17 hours on Saturday (yes, 17 hours... left home at 8am and got home at 1am) running around to make mum's life easier - doing Christmas shopping, putting up their Christmas decorations, wrapping a pile of presents for her - he can't even get his sorry ass around to help with a single thing. My mum is really self sufficient for her age, but I seriously don't think she should be getting on the roof to clean the gutters while the place is flooding. But she does it, because useless-brother "doesn't have time" to help. Then he sends me a text to ask if I've bought mum and dad's presents for him to give them. No I f*ing haven't, and no I'm not going to, you lazy prick. OK, sorry about that, really needed to get that off my chest.

In other news I've been sick. Not super duper sick, but I've got a cold which refuses to die. Probably because I've been eating crap and not exercising, and generally a bit run down. I've used it as a great excuse to eat more crap and do nothing of course. Well, no more. I got through step without really noticing the head cold. The only sign of it on my ride this morning was when I had snot running down my face because the lights refused to turn red to give me a chance to blow my nose. Oh, and I had to spit a couple of times. Gross, right? I hate doing that, but the alternative wasn't good. Sorry about the TMI, I'm just putting it all out there today, I CBF editing the thoughts going through my head for what is appropriate to put in writing.

I could go on and on today - that's what happens when I leave a month between blogs I guess. I have still been reading other blogs, but I haven't been posting on them much. I'll try to be more diligent with that, although the next couple of weeks do promise to be annoyingly busy. I'll see what I can do, and I'll try to keep up to date with my own blog too :)

Renovations and punctures

Here we are at Thursday morning, procrastinating about getting into the work on my desk. It's like groundhog day - I do this every day! I really just need to clear out this old crap that I hate working on, get it done, then I can move onto something a little more palatable.

It's all systems go on the home renovation front this week. The roller shutters went up on Tuesday, and they look great. I've got them all pretty much down at the moment, just cos I like to look at them, but they do make the place rather dark. So I think on the weekend I'll open them up and light up the house while I still can - before it gets stinking hot and I have them closed all the time to keep the cool air in. I'm really looking forward to seeing how much difference it makes to the upstairs temperature come summer time. Last summer I could get about 3/4 of the way upstairs and feel a heat wave hit me. As my bedroom is upstairs, this was a most unsatisfactory state of affairs. Here's hoping ($4500 later) that I have gone a good way to resolving that issue.

The paving man came around and gave me a quote on Tuesday too - also more than I wanted to spend, but I liked him and he seemed to know what he was talking about. He rung me yesterday and said they could start my job today if I had decided whether I wanted to proceed. So on a whim I signed up for another $4000 of expenditure on this damn house. It will be excellent to have the dead lawn area paved and useable for the warmer months though.

And lastly on the renovation front, my verandah man called to say that he had got the approval from my soon-to-be neighbours for the verandah I want to put up (it's going along the fence boundary at one side, so the council required signed approval from the neighbours... wouldn't have been such a headache if their house was actually finished and they were living in it. We had to track them down at their current address to get the approval. Fortunately they couldn't care less about the verandah and were happy to sign on the dotted line). So that has gone back to council, and we should have formal approval by next week, then construction can be done in December. With the exception of a side garden bed which I'm going to do myself, the whole yard (front and back) will be all done by the beginning of December. How exciting. OK, it will have taken me a whole 12 months since I moved in, but I am nevertheless still very excited by this outcome.

Onto all things diet and exercise related. I'm pretty tired, but the exercise has been going well this week. Since my last blog, I've done an 8km run (50 minutes and felt pretty good, apart from one mofo hill), Wednesday bootcamp (starting to enjoy these now, getting harder), and a cycle to work this morning. All good, except for the flat tyre I got this morning, grr. I'll have to borrow a car and take it to the bike shop at lunch and get it fixed, so I can ride it home. Getting to work took me about 1 hour and 5 this morning, instead of 40-45 minutes, seeing as I had to walk, pushing a bike, for a few km. Such is life. Anyway, with a cycle home tonight and bootcamp tomorrow morning, my calorie burn for the week should be over 3500. If I feel the need to do anything on the weekend I will, but if I feel like just resting up (and taking my dad out, and shopping, and basketball... all the weekendy type stuff), then I'll do that too with no guilt whatsoever.

My bootcamp people have given us all sorts of vouchers for referrals to allied health people that they have teamed up with. I've decided against the podiatrist (who used to be a client at my accounting firm... could be awkward). I'm giving some thought to the chiropractor (www.drbretthill.com) as I do need a new one - his website looks kind of interesting, he's into a lot more than just chiropractic. Maybe I could see him for a "wellness" consultation too. I just hate seeing new medical people, I find it so uncomfortable. Time to suck it up I suspect. The other voucher I have is for a fitness assessment, nutrition consult and 1/2 hour PT session for $30. I don't know whether to do this or not - I'm concerned that it will just be a big sales pitch, and there's no way that I would be signing up for regular PT sessions there (it's on the wrong side of town for me, and I just can't justify the cost at this stage). I don't know, I'm so indecisive.

Anyways, time to get into this revolting project on my desk. Hope everyone else's day is starting better than mine!

Slackness, then Cycling

Friday! Roll on weekend. It's gonna be a busy one, but at least it won't involve being locked up in this office. I seriously need to look at my work attitude at the moment, I couldn't give a rats about this place right now. The work is piling up around me, and I'm making holiday plans, training plans, writing blogs, doing anything other than being productive. Hmm, think I really need that holiday... 4 weeks to the day and counting.

So, Thursday - sloth. I woke up to my alarm and thought No Freaking Way am I getting out of bed right now. My upper body was caning (the increase in weights at Pump on Tuesday obviously had their effect), and the circuit just wasn't going to happen. So I went back to sleep and ended up being late. Meh. I also made myself slightly later by grabbing my HRM, putting it on and going back to bed to redo the fitness test. This came back with a reading of 40 ("good") instead of the 29 ("low") I got on the weekend, so that's better. My calorie burn this morning looks better too, so hopefully that's fixed the problem.

Thursday night I was planning on either doing the spin class at the gym, or doing a run from work. Given I was planning on cycling to work on Friday, I thought the spin class might be overkill, so I settled on the run. Got myself all changed and ready... then realised I'd left my sneakers at home. Dumb ass. So that was cancelled, and I went home and made dinner and watched Glee and The Good Wife instead. Really jacked that Alicia didn't hook up with Will by the way. Sorry about that tangent.

I made sure I was nice and organised last night, so this morning I was ready to hit the road. I haven't ridden Matilda (the road bike) for ages so I thought I would struggle. I did struggle on a few of the hills, but less than I thought I would - I did the 15km in about 40 minutes, including traffic lights etc, and I didn't die. My legs certainly felt it, and I know they're out of condition for cycling, but I'm sure I'll pick it up again in a reasonable time. Calorie burn was 430 for the ride, which is roughly what I would have expected - happy with that.

Now, for the weekend. It's going to be pretty busy with the home shows, dinner with a friend, markets, family amble, travel show and pug walk. Not sure that any dedicated exercise is going to fit in there. I'm half considering getting up early tomorrow morning to do a run before I head to mums to pick her up for the home shows. The other half of me is thinking about whether I'm going to want to get out of bed super early on a Saturday morning, and I think I have my answer. Barring devine intervention, I'm thinking my exercise total will be down this week.

Next week I'm starting bootcamp. I was looking forward to this until now - and now I'm just scared. They won't actually kill me right? It'll just feel like it at the time? Eeek. If I don't post next week, ring the hospitals, stat.