Fave Friday

An ode to exercise, this week. I have been exercising hard this holiday. I had somehow managed to convince myself that I really could continue to eat with gay abandon as long as I did enough exercise, but this is sadly not true.

However, I have now grown to enjoy it. A lady at the gym said she was amazed at how different I looked (I really don't see it, but it is nice of her anyway) and when I said it had become a habit she agreed and said, "Yes, I find now that if I *don't* exercise for a few days I start to get stiff, like my body is protesting." And I think she may be right.


Thanks to regular spin classes I might be at my fittest ever. I went on a bike ride with a new friend last week; we peddled to Bath from Saltford and back, which is about 4 miles each way, and I was nervous I would be a wobbling, huffing, sweaty mess. However, this was not the case. In fact, Lizzy seemed more out of breath than me; she hasn't cycled for a long time. I was so inspired I took the bike I borrowed from a colleague ooohh, five years ago and never rode, down to the cycle shop for a service. But I think I am going to have to give up on the resolution of 50 spin classes in 2012, unfortunately, because I am currently only at 24 and while I could make the effort of doing two a week until Christmas I can't do that AND train for the Sodbury Slog.

Ah yes, running. I am still waiting to enjoy running again. I remember enjoying it back in 2006, when I trained for and completed the Great South Run. I know I enjoyed it because I am wistfully jealous when I see runners on the road. But it is hard to enjoy it when 10 minutes of a very slow jog is just about all you can manage without stopping for a rest.

I read Junebug's post on exercise this week, though, and she really inspired me. For the first time since 2006, I laced up my trainers and went for a run outside, instead of on the treadmill. It's a lot easier to run outside, because I can vary my pace. I ran about 1.2km (roughly...) in around 10 minutes (don't work it out, it's so slow I don't even know if it counts as running), had a little rest on a bench, and then ran back in about the same time. It's slow, but I am training for a slog; I figure if I can run three bursts of three miles without too much trouble, I'll be OK on the day.

When I got to the end of my runner, I did what trainer-Jenny suggested and tried to spring the last 100m, so by the time I got to the bench I was totally wiped out. Face streaming, huffing like a good'un, probably a very attractive shade of red. Then I noticed this graffiti...



Genius. I laughed all the way home.

This is my 500th post on my Blogger blog, by the way. Well done me! One day I might get round to counting all the posts from my pre-blogger blog. ETA - curiosity got the better of me and I just did this. A mere 256 from October 1999-end of 2006. But they were massively wordy, and with hardly any pictures. I have managed to forget how painful writing the HTML offline and uploading via WSFTP was.