Teething Troubles

Today was a complete write off.  Got up, felt shaky but headed out to walk Murdoch anyway.  Left him with the walkers for the day and headed home to get ready for work.  Couldn't stop shivering, felt really ropey and decided that I'd get nothing meaningful done at work if I was feeling this bad and rang in sick.  I then put on my onesie, turned the heating up and tried to get warm.  In addition to this, I have a grumbly wisdom tooth coming up and my mouth is pretty sore.  So all in all, not a great day.

When I decided to do Janathon, I decided not to count my daily dog walk as part of my activity.  I do it every day and because my goal was to increase my activity, counting the walk felt like a cop out.  But today it was all I got done, so it'll have to do.  I'm hoping to feel better tomorrow and get something proper done.

I hope the rest of the Janathoners are feeling a bit more perky!

Today did not go to plan

Ach. What a day.  I had originally planned to head to the pool this evening, but even with a giant Janathon shaped boot up my arse, I just couldn't face the thought of it.  So instead I tried to do a home workout using the Nike Training Club app on my phone.  Disaster. I decided to try the Cardio Killer workout.  This was my first mistake.  It started off with alternate froggers.  I can only imagine that this was invented during the war to torture prisoners.  I only had to do a minute of them, but after 20 seconds I wanted to cry.  The situation was not helped by Murdoch happily trotting over to see what I was up to and getting underneath me while I was trying to "frogger".  I ordered him to his bed and moved onto the second exercise: 1 minute of burpees which I merrily perform for at least 10 seconds before Murdoch is moved to come over and investigate again. Gaaaaaaah. Next it's 30 seconds squat hold.  By this point my tragically unfit legs are already quaking from the frogger / burpee fiasco so the squat hurts after a few seconds. But I struggle on and move onto 30 seconds of squat jumps.  Murdoch thinks this is a super fun game and stares at me, wagging his tail hopefully. "Can I jump too?" No.  I can't do it anymore either so after THREE MINUTES I decide to give it up as a bad lot.  

The evening is further thwarted by the dog crate that I ordered for my new car.  My old dog guard did not fit into the boot of my new car, so Murdoch has been able to jump into the front of the car if he so chooses.  He's generally quite good at staying in the boot while I'm in the car, but if we need to stop off at the shop on the way back from a walk, I'll come back to the car to find him in the driver's seat.  Not great in this weather, I keep getting muddy paw prints on my nice upholstery.  I thought that buying the crate would be a simple matter.  I measured the dimensions of the boot, checked the dimensions listed for the crate and ordered it.  The boot dimensions haven't changed in the interim and the crate measurements are as described.  So why won't the crate fit in my boot?  It's because the slopey sides are not on the sides that I expected.  Buggrit.  Now have to return it and try again.  So anyway, given that I had an extended wrestle with the damn crate trying to get it into the car, I'm classing that as cross training, bunging in my 35 minute slippy slidey dog walk from this morning and calling it Janathon.  Feels like a bit of a cop out, but there you have it.  If I try to pull something like this again tomorrow, then please kick my butt for me.  Thanks.

You can't be cross with me because I'm so cute

Janathon the fourth be with you

What a difference a day makes!  Yesterday's weather made me wonder if those predictions about the world ending in 2012 were actually true!  We had a load of trees down - I even saw one fall from my office window, although thankfully it fell in the other direction.  One of our local bus drivers wasn't so lucky and had to be cut out of his bus after a tree fell on it!  Full story here.   This morning it's a whole different story - dry and bright with a little chill to the air.  

Once again the day started with a 35 minute dog walk in the dark.  At least I'm getting value for money from my headtorch.  But afterwards I left Murdoch with the dog walkers.  They do a great daycare service and it's time that Murdoch got back into his routine and worked some of his Christmas podge off.  He'll get walked several times today, which is awesome and it also meant that I could head straight to the gym before work and get my day four workout in early.

The gym was quite busy, but I was able to get onto a cross trainer right away and did 3.3k in 25 minutes.  Then I hopped onto the recumbent bike and did 3.75k in 10 minutes. That's all I had time for before hitting the showers and heading to work, but it's another tick in the Janathon box.  Tomorrow I'm going to try running again as the heel seems to have settled down a little - watch this space!

To the Gym!

It was my first day back at work today. Boo. And what a day.  I got up this morning to walk Murdoch at 6.30am and it was blowing a hoolie out there.  Cross country dog walking in the dark is challenging at the best of times, but when it's really windy the dogs get overexcited by all the smells gusting past their noses and go a bit mental. Also, I get nervous every time I hear a creaking branch ("it's going to fall on my head") or the dogs crashing through the fallen branches ("DUCK AND COVER!"). Yikes. We got home without incident and I headed to the office.  January is our busiest month of the year; in addition to our usual monthly reports, we also have quarterly, six monthly and annual reports to deliver so I had a lot to get done today.  No easing in gently after the festive break.  I still managed to get home at lunchtime to let Murdoch out.  As ever, he was really pleased to see me and very disappointed when I had to leave to go back to work.  At least he has his toys and a bone to keep him company while I toil away to keep him in doggy biscuits.

*Gollum face*

After leaving work for the day I headed to the gym.  My heel is still a little tender and I think that running two days in a row may have been a little optimistic right at the beginning of my comeback and I'll need to be a little more cautious in the future.  So I decided to get on the cross trainer.  Unfortunately it's January and there were considerably more people in the gym than usual.  All the cross trainers were taken.  Aaaaaw nuts. So I get on the summit trainer.  There is a reason that no-one wanted to go on this machine. It is the devil.  I managed 10 minutes on it before I collapsed onto a regular cross trainer that had become available. So in total I did 25 minutes of cross training and then headed home for dinner.

Dithering

This morning I treated myself to a bit of a lie in and headed to Guildford at 9am for a pack walk with my dog walkers and some other folk.  We walked cross country for about 50 minutes - I was covered in mud by the time we got back to my car!  Unfortunately Murdoch didn't quite get back to my car.  He decided to jump into someone else's car and get his muddy paw prints over pretty much all of the inside of it.  Oops.  

On yesterday's blog @knittingpenguin asked if I'd be logging any dog-jogs for Janathon. Murdoch used to have aggression problems with other dogs, so I tend to keep him calm and level when we're out and about. So he doesn't get to run with me.  Thankfully he gets to scamper about with other dogs, so it's not all bad!

When I got home after the walk I put away my Christmas decorations. It's January 2012 and it feels like it's time to look forward.  Then I did a little housework followed by quite a bit of  dithering.  My heel was feeling a little achy - I've run on it for the past two days and I'm right at the very beginning of my comeback from injury.  The question is, was this the reason that I didn't want to go for a run, or was I just being incredibly lazy?  I have lacked motivation before and we all know how easy it is to make excuses not to get out there.  But in the end I decided not to push it and go for a swim instead of the 20 minute run that I had planned.  So I headed to the pool and did 1,500 metres in 30 minutes for a big tick in the Janathon box for today.

I have a treadmill run planned for tomorrow but will wait and see what my heel is doing.  Might be some cross training instead.

Janathon the First

Happy New Year Everyone!  

I'm so excited to be taking part in Janathon for the first time this year.  I've just come off the injury bench and a woeful lack of motivation combined with a severe case of the grumps meant that cross training just didn't happen in those five months.  As a result, I gained quite a bit of weight (weighed in this morning at a very round 14 stone) and lost a lot of fitness.   Hard to believe that this time last year I was starting my training for the Brighton Marathon!

In any case, I'm very glad that Janathon is here as I need all the support and motivation that I can get and this morning it got me out of the door.  I have to build slowly to avoid my heel flaring back up again, so today's aim was to run for 20 minutes around the playing field as I am not allowed on hard surfaces just yet.

I got up first thing and walked the dog for an hour.  There weren't many people about at 8 o'clock this morning and I felt glad that I hadn't boozed it up the night before as I got to enjoy the countryside at its most peaceful.  Got home, fed the dog, pulled together all of the enthusiasm that I could muster and headed to the playing field.  Not the most interesting of runs, but I achieved my goal, running 1.68 miles in 20:21. It wasn't fast and it wasn't pretty but it felt great to be back out there and make a start.

2011. A year in review

At the start of 2011 I was pulling together a marathon training plan and gearing up to run the Brighton Marathon.  Training did not go to plan.  I lacked motivation and couldn't find the right head space.  I think this may have been down to the fact that this was my third consecutive year of marathon training and I needed a rest. Mentally mainly.  In any case the net result was that I missed an awful lot of sessions and hit the start line in April woefully under prepared.  I made it round the course, running the last 16 miles on what turned out to be an enormous blood blister on the bottom of my left foot.   Ouch.

The very next day, I started a new job.  I had been headhunted through LinkedIn and went to one of our competitors for what sounded like a fantastic opportunity. And in some ways it was.  Despite the fact that I left that new job within a few months and returned to my original place of work, it was the catalyst that started the biggest change to my life this year.  The new job was based in London and I had to resolve Murdoch's aggression towards other dogs so that I could get him walked while I was at work.  I'd tried other trainers and behaviourists in the past, but I finally found some people that were able to help us and after six years of walking on the lead, Murdoch is finally able to run around with other dogs.  I can't describe how wonderful this is, both for Murdoch and for me.  For the first time, dog walking has become a sociable activity that I can do with other people rather than dragging Murdoch around by myself.

The other big thing that happened in spring was that I became an aunt for the first time.  I love my niece so much and it's wonderful to see how much she has grown and changed each time I see her.  She's a really cheerful little girl and always has a smile for me.  She also currently loves to blow raspberries. Waterproof clothing is advised.

The summer was not so great. After not really running since the marathon, I foolishly went and did some sprint training in July straight after a 6 mile run.  In hindsight [:)] this may have been a leeeeetle bit too much and I injured my heel.  One heck of a lot of physio and many cumulative hours of stretching later and I have just been able to start running again over the past couple of weeks.  I've signed up for #Janathon and have planned out an exercise schedule to do something every day in January - most of it running, which feels pretty exciting.

The weight issue reared its ugly head again.  I've gained a lot of weight this year, partly down to the lack of running and massive lack of motivation that accompanied it and partly because I've failed to address my issues with food.  But the good news is that I've started to figure a few things out about myself and I'm getting some help to figure out the rest.  So as the year draws to a close, I'm in a pretty good place.  

All in all it's been an interesting year and we'll have to wait and see what 2012 brings!