53 years ago, people were getting up to incredible feats. This short documentary shows the longest unpaced single day classic cycling race that took place in 1964 (not 1962 as the caption says). Does that inspire you to get out on your bike for a ride this week?
Thank you to everyone who’s voted for Fat Girl to Ironman so far – there’s still time to cast your vote in The 2018 Running Awards.
I went out for my first run since I had laser eye surgery yesterday. I’ve been desperate to go out for a run. I didn’t want to push too hard and was looking to have a social run, but I didn’t see anyone I knew who was going to be running at conversational pace – possibly because it was cold, wet and windy.
Nearly finished!
I knew that the run was going to be tough as I’ve not eaten well for the last two weeks, which was made worse by the total lack of exercise. I also realised at the start of the run that I had forgotten to pick up an inhaler, so I had to be careful. Every time that I started to have breathing problems, I slowed down a bit. Fortunately, this strategy seemed to work. It wasn’t a fast run, but I finished:
Now, I just need to start eating healthily again and get back on the training wagon, to knock three+ minutes off that time!
Amusingly, in the evening, I received this email:
Clearly, if I want to receive a cheerful email, I need to go out at a fast pace on my first run of the month!
I read this post on RunKeeper this week: Brian: Losing 365 pounds and getting my life back. It’s really inspirational, so I urge you to read it.
If you use RunKeeper and want to connect with me, I’m here: http://runkeeper.com/user/fatgirltoironman
I tend to ‘use’ quite a few exercise trackers (mostly as I use tapiriik to sync my data to all of them)
GarminConnect is my main tracker, but I quite like what Strava does. I also like their new code of conduct: Stand with us.
If you want to find me anywhere else, you can also find me:
I’m also doing Jantastic again this year: https://www.jantastic.me/ It’s a challenge that runs through January, February and March, where you set your own goal sand then aim to meet them. I had to reset my goals as I had intended to swim at least twice a week throughout January. I’m not allowed to swim again for a few more weeks, so I had to change that goal.
This morning, Teri and I had agreed to run, but she also needed to go to junior parkrun with her children, so I agreed to go along and marshal as well before we went for our run.
Initially, I didn’t think it was very cold out as there wasn’t any frost, but after standing around for just over half an hour, I was definitely feeling the cold. I took off my jogging trousers and put them in Teri’s car, but couldn’t bring myself to remove my running jacket as I just had a short-sleeved t-shirt on underneath.
We started off at a steady pace – mainly because I couldn’t go any faster. We ran around Riverside Park, which was a nice change from running on The Common. Then we headed along some of the route of Southampton Half Marathon. It’s quite hilly, so I know that I need to do lots of hill-training between now and April.
On the way to The Common, we saw Irene and Alice from Lordshill Road Runners, then on The Common we saw Rob and Nick out running. It’s lovely that whenever I go for a run I see people I know.
Still wearing sunglasses to protect my eyes
This afternoon, I’ve been in the kitchen. I’m hoping to plan all of my meals for the week and also prepare my breakfast and lunch for tomorrow to try to get the week off to a good start. For tea tonight (and tomorrow and Wednesday), we’re going to have a home-made chilli – yummy! It’s quite a simple dish:
It’s a smoky bbq type chilli as a consequence of the chipotle paste and the molasses. It’s also a dish that improves after a day or two. I quite often cook large one-pot meals like this, so that I don’t need to cook every day.
As I’ve not been able to go out and exercise, I’ve watched a few TV programmes online. I finally had a chance to watch ‘The Adventure Show’ on BBC iPlayer. The episode that I was interested in was episode 5, which is one that focused on a group of cyclists doing an Audax event in Scotland. This is something that I would like to do one day, but I need to build up my cycling quite a lot before it happens!
I also watched an excerpt from the Graham Norton show, featuring Bradley Wiggins:
What have you been up to?
…or so says triathlete Courtney Pullman’s coach (http://www.powertap.com/blogs/news/8941821-an-interview-with-triathlete-courtney-pollman) which seems like a really good mantra to live by.
One of my cycling friends shared this on Facebook today and it made me laugh out loud: http://www.ilovebicycling.com/cycling-jokes-what-cyclists-say-and-what-they-mean/
I could especially relate to:
It’s the time of year when everyone seems to be reviewing the previous year and discussing their goals or resolutions. It’s been great to read about lots of other people making manageable life changes rather than trying to make such a dramatic change that they’re unlikely to still be doing things differently in a month’s time. Two people have blogged about this in a way that has resonated with me. This first is So Much Fattitude with her post on not dieting, but eating when hungry, which has been a change in attitude as a consequence of reading ‘intuitive eating’. She has blogged about it here: http://somuchfattitude.com/2014/01/03/a-separation-of-fitness-and-food/
The second post that I thought was really inspirational is on Running to her Dreams‘ blog: http://runningtoherdreams.com/2014/01/03/remember-the-why/ As well as being beautifully illustrated (as usual) with heart shapes found in nature, it includes obvious truths such as “We have 365 days a year to start something new.” and then the real kicker: “I believe by changing our mindset. By looking at every day as a chance to start over. By looking at every day as a chance to do better. By making every single day an opportunity to get ready for “bikini season”. And remembering why we made that resolution or commitment to ourselves in the first place. We can. And we will. Become stronger, wiser and healthier than we ever dreamed we could be.” These are such powerful words – I urge you to go and read the whole post… you will come away inspired!
Despite having calibrated my goals, I’m not allowing myself to think of being imperfect as failing. Today, I was hoping to go swimming and I had written that into my training schedule. However, I’m struggling with sinusitis and after cycling home from work, I wasn’t feeling especially good. Then a phone call from a family member broke some sad news, so I decided not to go swimming. I have been repeating to myself that this is not failure. I have managed to eat healthily today (apart from a small piece of Christmas cake, which was my evening treat), so I’m not going to beat myself up about missing one work out when I needed some rest and recuperation time. Too often in the past, I have set my goals impossibly high and broken myself trying to achieve them – I do not want to end up having time off work because I’ve overdone it when I should have given myself a break.
Also linking to my thoughts about being competitive, I watched this video by Tim Van Orden about ‘running naked’. (Thanks to Sandra for mentioning it in her latest post).
However, despite Tim’s wise words about the need to pay attention to one’s body, I must admit that I am enjoying being able to get some data about my swimming from my lovely new Garmin 910XT (mainly because I’m hopeless at counting how many lengths I’ve done in the pool).
I’ve also been working on my top-secret project relating to this blog and hope to be able to reveal some exciting news soon, but that’s all I’ll say about it for now!
I’ve joined runningbloggers.com to try to connect with more like-minded people and have decided to participate in their Fitness Friday link ups, where people share their latest fitness related blog posts – check it out to see if there’s anything you like:
http://runningbloggers.com/the-fitness-friday-linkup-13/
Finally, I’d like to say welcome and thank you to all of the people who have visited my blog for the first time this week. I hope that you’ll come back again… and if you’ve got a blog of your own, please feel free to tell me about why I’d like it in the comments below 🙂
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Fat Girl to Ironman 