Shallow

Walked down the hill last night for a meal with a former colleague J & her flatmate K - although I'm not sure that 30mins walking completely justified a fab plate of tagliatelle, cream and mushrooms... bad indigestion followed & I couldn't sleep.

So I read instead - Louise Kean's "The Perfect 10" - which despite being a light chicklit novel has well observed description of what it's like to lose lots of fat & how it impacts your head. Now thinking about "what's it all for?" is making me think - I'm not down as such, but definitely not overcome with the joys of spring. The main character stating how she's become more vain definitely hit home! Feeling shallow about being so focussed on my weight, my appearance and my own fitness level.

In Laws do Cycling

Went cycling on Saturday with Husband & his parents in the Forest – very very impressed with them both!

Mum-ish hadn’t been on a bike for approx 16 years and Dad-ish hadn’t done much more than that. We hired bikes for them both from Burley & found an empty coach park for them to practise before heading off. We’d chosen a route with loads of options to cut short or to take an easier route, but all not necessary. We did over 15 miles – mostly off road – including a ford and some changing of gears. Both said they were saddle sore afterwards. Even more impressive is that on Sunday, both of them were fine – no aches/pains/strains – which indicates that they are fit!


On Sunday, did some walking coz we went to London for Mum-ish’s Mothering Sunday day out – very pleasant wander across Hyde Park as we made our way from the Serpentine Gallery to the National Gallery.

Went to gym later on – 10mins X trainer, 26mins interval work on treadmill. Think I’m ready to push it up to 28mins next time.

No Longer Obese Bird

Weighed myself today - 79 kilos which makes me un-obese! I'm not a big fan of BMI measurements as they don't differentiate between muscle mass & fatty mass - but I can't pretend that I'm not chuffed to fall into a different category.

Gym on Saturday evening, following a very pleasant day shopping with A in Bath. Stuck to x trainer and weights as my legs were still aching from Thursday.

Today should have been a stretching 20 mile route NE of Salisbury but it was soon apparent that Husband wasn't well - he wasn't delivering any power to his pedals and was looking scarlet faced & v.sweaty after just 1 climb. I failed to persuade him to turn back (he had his determined face on!) but we persuaded M&A to carry on ahead as it was going to be a long slow ride for us! The SNB then took charge & its chain then snapped, caused by a bent cog. So even Husband had to admit defeat! he did a quick repair job on the bike & we pedalled back to car. So just 6 miles!

I was still feeling in need of some exercise so went for a run this afternoon but tried off road for the first time. Started off in woods close to the house & did a 5.2km route. Resorted to walking at one very muddy section - so I was amazed that I did 5km in 33:09! Beautiful day & it helped me to remember just how pleasant the area so close to the house is. And I acieved sweaty muddiness without a bike....

Then went to Hayling Island with Husband as it was just too good weather not to be outside - I took the photos here. Wandered along the beach & Husband got his sea fix - something to do with being born/brought up at the seaside apparently.

Just spotted that A has her Race for Life fundraising site up & running - click here to view & donate!

Ireland, Skating, Gym

Jogging on Friday - which demonstrated that rest days are important as I took about 1 minute longer to complete the route than last time!

Fabulous weekend in Northern Ireland - courtesy of C & R's engagement party. Spent Saturday walking around the 60 acres that comprise the Ulster Folk Museum - lots of buildings form all over Ireland from churches to teeny tiny cottages that apparently accomodated families with 7 kids.

Boogying on Saturday night at the party - the highlight was Husband whisking me around to Mack the Knife.

More walking on Sunday - we went up to see Giant's Causeway. The coast was beautiful and it stayed dry! Also went to Bushmills (discovered that I do like whiskey despite hating scotch) and to Dunluce castle. Husband was suffering though - he had pain in his ankles and knees by the end of the afternoon.

Flew back on Monday. Skating with G - our last session before next week's test. A couldn't make jogging last night so I spent the evening cooking soup. Missed Body Combat tonight as I had a dentist appointment - dragged myself down the gym (seriously lacking motivation!).

Old Winchester Hill

Saw Mum & Dad on Sunday in between the end of their first cruise as staff & their return flight to Newcastle. Went up the Spinnaker Tower - which doesn't count as exercise apart from some steps to get to the Crows Nest.


On the way back to the house, we detoured North & had a very pleasant wander on Old Winchester Hill - unresolved debate about what breed the sheep up there are! Mum & Dad walked the South Downs Way a couple of years ago and I know that they've also been to the hill with us before, but they still seemed to enjoy the views.




Skating tonight - I thought G had damaged her hand badly at one point - she fell really hard on it. She recovered her composure so well - most impressive! We did (more) sculling, gliding on one leg (easy!) and jumping (less easy). Tried to convince the instructor that we were rabbits on ice but she seemed to prefer a frog metaphor - no accounting for taste.

It is Husband's birthday today. He very generously insisted that I go skating tonight - don't think I would have been so understanding if roles were reversed! Very grateful as I was keen not to miss a lesson.

Currently making marmalade - lots of stirring but even I would struggle to justify calculating calories expended! Seems to be taking ages to get to setting point - don't think I have the patience to become a true domestic goddess.

Fastest Ever 5K. Again.

34:04 last night. That's better than last time & a few seconds towards my target...
The Forerunner is coming into its own - it's so useful being able to track speed/distance - for example, I know that excluding the mad/uncontrolled dash at the end, my first lap was the fastest so I now need to focus on either starting slower so I've got more to give later on or focus on pushing myself later to run at the same pace that I start with.
My heartrate was high - which I'm putting down to still feeling a little under the weather.
New ipod armband worked well.

And then I walked to the pub - just 25 mins but its all good stuff.

I think Husband has flu - can't believe he's had such lousy health over the last month.

Cliche - New Year = Back on the Big D

After a couple of weeks of (most enjoyable) over indulgence, back on the Big D today. Logging all food & booze onto WLR again along with my exercise calories.

Went for a very wet walk with Husband yesterday at Mudeford - lots of Ringed Plovers, Oystercatchers - and very dedicated windsurfers. After a drunken New Year's party at B&J's, walked up the hill rather than waiting for a taxi. About 90 mins walking in total.

Gym today - still feel that my cold is holding me back. 20 mins x trainer, 20 mins interval jogging (8 & 10 kph, 2 min intervals, pushed up to 8.5 & 11 for the last 4 mins). Husband swam - really chuffed as his cold has been so nasty & long lasting - said he found it hard, but I think he's pleased that he managed it.

So, the new year resolutions are to keep up the big D, run 5k in 30 mins and to ensure that I have fun achieving my objectives through doing loads of what I know I enjoy (e.g. mountain biking) and through trying new stuff like skating.

Walkin' in the Rain

Half an hour traipse from car dent removing place to the office in the pouring rain - very glad I'm not wearing jeans today as it means I should dry off OK!

Smug last night - went late night shopping last night- slim fitting type skirt from Hobbs (i.e. not forgiving!), size 16, fits! I proclaim myself size 16 from the waist down and Gap L for my top half. But I do now have to get back into post Christmas eating regime or all these lovely new clothes I've been buying won't fit!

Husband had wiggle vouchers for Christmas so I've just piggy backed a new jacket onto his order - very orange with lots of reflective bits so should be good for winter running and cycling...

Brilliant Views – shame about the speed

I’ve been looking forward to my Christmas jog for weeks – to the extent that I was terrified that the cold I’d developed on the 22nd was going to stop play. But as it was still a head cold by the 25th, I decided to go ahead.
Loved the route – from the house over to the cliff at Babbacombe, along the road to Ansteys Cove, along Torbay’s millionaire’s row to get to the beach hut for a fried breakfast. The waves were crashing on the beach. Lots of cormorants out fishing for their breakfast too!
Shame about my speed – I averaged a dawdling 8kph but I was keeping my heartrate low-ish in deference to not being well. Just pleased that I did it.
My cold caught up with me later though & I was in bed by 9pm… Still not 100% so will skip the gym today. Will prob go tomorrow though & do a gentle routine.

Not much else in the way of exercise – Husband had the cold too but it was on his chest & causing him much more discomfort. We introduced Husband’s parents to the joys of geocaching on Christmas Eve, finding 2 micro caches in Babbacombe. They seem very keen to find more, perhaps with the grandchildren on their next visit. At least it’s motivation to get more au fait with their GPS unit!

So need to get back on the straight & narrow

Thursday dissolved into an inappropriate amount of drinking for a schoolnight - one of the side effects was not having to worry about how many calories were in the seafood pasta I'd had earlier in the evening...... good to see J again but a killer hangover on Friday.

Went to Torquay this weekend to celebrate Husband's Dad's 70th birthday - lots of food (birthday cake, marzipan sweets made by 6 year old nephew, roast chesnuts & ice cream) & not masses of exercise apart from playing with nephews on the beach on Saturday & escaping for a faster walk on Saturday afternoon at a pace dictated by my ipod. Great views & very autumnal light. Highlight for me was showing 2 year old nephew sea anemones & getting him to tease one with his finger so its tentacles gently grabbed at him.

Paved with Good Intentions

I did mean to blog wholst on hols - honest!

Anyhow, a summary:

• 3 jeeps
• Desert
• 2 bike rides
• Hoodoos
• Umpteen mini hikes
• Humungous portions
• A natural water slide
• More Desert
• Chipmunks, mule deer, turkey vultures, wild turkeys & lots of flowers I'm yet to identify
• And Desert

Dog Walking

I couldn't cycle on Monday as my face was still tender & swollen from the bone graft. So instead, I hitched a lift with Husband who was meeting J&B and A&M for a bike ride in the Forest. Whilst they pedalled over the horizon, I took J's corgi Sally for a walk. Horrendous traffic - we should know better by now than to attempt the Forest on a bank holiday!

2 and a half hours later, came back to car park with slightly tired looking corgi. She was very tolerant of being dragged around by me, posed for some pics and was very well behaved but she seemed very pleased to see J afterwards!

Very grateful to Sally that I didn't have to bag up any dog poo en route as I think that falls into the category of life skills I don't intend to acquire (along with changing nappies and changing tyres).

J did incredibly well - cycling 19.7 miles, almost all off road, despite not having cycled at all for at least a year. A was also chuffed as she could remember doing the same route just a few weks ago & finding it so much easier this time.

Rounded off the day nicely with a drink & meal in Burley.

Walking

Half an hour yesterday to walk to the dentist - which will be about all the exercise I will do fora couple of days as post dentist, I look like a lopsided bloodhound & it's all quite tender if not too painful!

Grizedale Biking & Sister's Wedding

We tried the North Face trail in Grizedale on Friday http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/infd-69hbp2 - less scary than Coed y Brenin but still challenging enough for me to walk quite a few bits and to fall off, breaking my chain! Fortunately, broke my chain just before the last singletrack section so I don't feel that I lost out and it was fairly easy to get back to the car. Wonderful views of Coniston Old Man at the highest point as well as seeing more of the sculptures within Grizedale Forest. Ate bilberries and saw a couple of wrens.

Saturday was Middle Sister's wedding and Oldest Nephew's naming ceremony - which included walking (a mile-ish?) from Village Hall to an open access area (very young woodland) close to their house with views across to the Lakeland fells. We had a picnic after the ceremony & then walked back to the hall for hog roast followed by a boogy. Wonderful day!

No pics of the wedding here as I'm now deliberately avoiding pictures of people unless I get permission or they are unrecognisable (it's me on the bike in the pic with this post - so that's OK!). Middle Sister looked stunning in a blue floaty long grecian kind of dress, New-Brother-In-Law had an indian embroidered jacket and Oldest Nephew looked very cute.

Back on the Big D today after a weekend of excess..... in particular, lots of courgette cake. Very impressed that Middle Sister found the time to bake me a birthday cake and that Mum & Baby Sister iced it for me in amongst the preparation for the wedding.

Testway, Danebury and lots of mud

Rain delayed the start by about an hour, but Saturday's ride was great. About 14 miles-ish with Husband, M & A. A did absolutely brilliantly - opting to do a much more challenging ride than I'd expected and completing it without appearing to be too wiped. Husband is complaining about how M is harder to keep up with since he quit smoking - good bit of motivation for Husband to get faster!

Due to the torrential rain, there were big unavoidable puddles that meant we were very wet right from the start - as you can see from the photo of M's legs further down this blog!

Nice, varied route - started on the ultra flat ex railway that is the Test Way. Then we moved onto undulating tracks with better views of the countryside. Brief bit of road & then onto very rucked tracks - I did fall off and bruised my chest with the handle bars - it's a lovely burgundy colour atm!
Final bit was road but going across a very picturesque bit of the Test with thatched fishermens' huts and eel traps - as you can see from the photo.
A reckons my bum has got smaller - she did get a good view as she was just behind me for some of the way...
Lots of nettles & brambles - my legs are covered in little scratches.
Only wildlife stuff I noticed (OK, I was chatting too much to notice much!) was a v.pretty pair of goldfinches. Blue scabious stood out in some of the field edges.

Later, Husband & I walked to & from the pub - another hour of exercise to add. I felt very justified in enjoying 2 pints of summer lightning (an appropriate beer for a day with thunderstorms) in addition to gin & slimlines.

No other active stuff to report. Christening on Sunday and a prolonged search for a car 4 me took up most of the rest of the weekend. A little over on calories for Sunday, but looking good for the week as a whole.

Tiny amount of exercise this week

No gym visits so far - the warning light for my brake pads came on when I was driving to work on Monday & its taken a few days to sort out - Kwikfit have just phoned to say they are now sorted. As a result, I've been reluctant to do any unnecessary driving - and that does include driving up to the gym at Hemel after work.

Still - will have done about 30 mins walking today (Kwikfit-station-office & back again) and I spent yesterday afternoon on my feet doing store walks - better than being a complete couch potato - but I'm aware that I'm getting close to that!

Blisters on my feet

Not as good as going to the gym, but I did a fair amount of walking yesterday - office to station, tube to go to another office, extra 2 mins of walking up & down the same bit of road failing to find the right building, back to tube, station to office to pick up car.... carpark to M&S to pick up lazy dinner...

Anyhow, I have blisters on my feet as all of this was done in heels, so I figure it counts!

Walking done

About 40 mins walking last night & 30 mins this morning. Counteracted any possible benefit by going out for drinks & dinner - but I did stick to G&T (all slimline bar one), a brandy & some v.tasty pasta with seafood. Last week's hangover when I opted to drink instead of eat was not something I wanted to experience again...

Had my first "have you lost weight recently?" comment from a colleague at work yesterday - very gratifying!

Fat Bird Goes to Lake District

Part 2 of our hols!

Wednesday: Slipped in a very brief gym visit before driving up to stay with middle sister & family. Glad that Husband convinced me that we did have time. 10mins on the X trainer, 10 mins jogging and then some weights.

Thursday: Very pleasant 9 mile bike ride around Claife Heights on the west shore of Windermere. Resorted to walking quite a few of the ups and a couple of the scarier downs. The rain held off, but it wasn't the brightest of days. The ride was very much 2 halves - the first included a long climb to the brow of the heights in rugged looking upland landscape. The second half was a gentler whizz along the shore line, with some gorgeous bits of mossy oak woodland, carpeted with bluebells.And we also had a toddler paced amble later on - my 17 month old nephew did lots of pointing excitedly at absolutely everything - sheep, goats, tractors, vans, river, trees, ants....

Friday: Dragged Husband out for a half hour consitutional walk before dinner. It was a good opportunity to scope out where Middle Sister's wedding will be in August - a spot with great views of the countryside east of Kendal. I was pleased witht he light in both the attached photos.

Saturday: Grizedale forest - we did a 7 mile circuit (more would have streched my nephew's tolerance of being in a bike seat too far) although Husband and Brother-in-Law-2b did escape off for 1 stretch of the downhill course. Now have plans to go back there on the Friday before middle sister's wedding to do the full downhill route and to see a few more of the sculptures in the forest.... I used my sister's bike for the last part - it's a very fast, urban bike - big slick tires, no suspension and beautifully built. If I ever find myself doing lots of road cycling, it'd be tempting to trade up my hybrid to something similar.

Sunday: Great Manchester 10K Run - completed it, albeit following my "I haven't trained enough plan" of walking alternate kilometres. That worked much better than attempting to run all of it & resorting walking after 5K as I didn't feel as if I had failed. Plus, having the shorter targets for each bit I ran worked very well.

Middle Sister & Brother-in-Law-2b did brilliantly. I was able to see their final sections due to the staggered starts & parallel bits of the route. Seeing Middle Sister bounding along, looking very comfortable with only 1.5k to go was a fantastic sight!

It rained - which I prefer to blazing sunshine - but that did mean driving back down south with wet feet in soggy trainers!

French Exercise Volume 3

Tuesday 2nd May
Our only "proper" walk. Having gazed up at the ridge of hills south of Fougaron for 3 years, we finally made it up onto it. To save Husband's ankles, we drove as far as Fontaine de l'Ours to minimise the length of the walk by starting at 1100m. It was still a good hour uphill to the Tuc de Tucol - at over 1500m it definitely qualifies as a proper hill! Terrain was steep beech covered slopes with the occasional bit of limestone poking through. Again, I took the poles up and Husband used them to come down - I'm impressed that he managed the full thing comparatively pain free. Took about 45 mins to descend.
Superb views from the top of the Pyrenees proper - snow capped and looking like proper pointy mountains.
Nature Stuff: Deer and red kites. From the summit, we saw a pair of vultures riding the thermals, drifting over the valley. Wild daffodils and stunning blue gentians (I think!) also on the summit.