January 5th: Northala Fields parkrun (see last entry).
January 6th: After staying up too late drinking cocktails with chillis in them and discussing the minutiae of running watches, I was in no mood to do anything and would probably have spent the entire day watching TV if it were not for this blasted initiative. Instead, I took myself to the nearby vegan market for a vegan hot dog and a vegan doughnut (10/10 hangover food) and then walked 10k up through Chingford, Pole Hill and Epping Forest before losing interest and getting on a bus home. The secondary purpose of this exercise was to determine if you can run round the east side of the William Girling Reservoir thus creating a northern loop from my house. Answer: you can’t, unless you want to run along a nasty main road or an extremely overground passageway behind some houses only suitable for rats and burglars. Epping Forest itself looks okay for a run, but it will have to wait until it is warm enough to catch the bus there.
January 7th: Day shift at work. I would normally go to bed as soon as I got home. Instead, I treated myself to a new Jillian Michaels workout video, Lift and Shred. You can’t beat a bit of Jillian Michaels. I love all her gibberish about not “phoning it in” and “getting ripped” and I especially love Maddie and Natalie in 30 Day Shred and how Maddie pretends to be exhausted by the effort of flinging a two kilo dumbbell around for ten minutes. The new video is more strength and less cardio than the others I have tried which was fine because I did not have the energy for cardio. The next day my quads and hamstrings felt quite upset with me.
January 8th: Another day shift. Turbo trainer workout, which I would have done anyway. Finally found a YouTube video with no sweaty lycra men and a nice view of the Majorcan hills.
January 9th: Annual leave for sole purpose of fitting in Long Slow Run. 17.5km to Stratford with extra loop round Victoria Park. Will write about half marathon training separately if I ever have the time. Volunteering for RunThrough in the evening which also deserves an entry of its own that I don’t have time to write.
January 10th: Surprise canine houseguest. Fortunately it’s a yoga day. And I have managed to choose a simple, stretchy, non-balancy kind of yoga this time. I’m sure the dog will just sit quietly in the corner while I do my video. Oh, he’s sitting on the mat. Remove dog to kitchen. Dog lies defeatedly on floor giving me evil look while I do a few sun salutations. Video switches to lying-on-floor kind of pose. Dog thinks I am dead, comes and licks me repeatedly in the face. Ignore dog. Dog starts pawing at my shoulder. I suppose I know that if I do ever have a medical emergency, he won’t just leave me to die. But he’s totally fucked my yoga up. Still, it says “exercise every day”, it doesn’t say “exercise efficiently every day”. Also I am sure walking the dog must count as exercise. Come on then. Walkies!
(I am amazed that he actually cooperated in having his photo taken at various stages of his interference in my activity.)
7:07 