Reasonably Fit

I need real people to inspire me.  I know that those inspirational speakers and sportspeople know what they are saying and doing, and that it probably is true - but to me that isn't real. This blog is about health and fitness for real people, and to me, those who are paid to do it are lucky that it has worked out for them to be doing what they are passionate about and believe in, but I just can't relate to what they are saying and doing as it is so far removed from my life and experience. Let me tell you about some people who do inspire me: The first is a colleague at work, Andrea. Andrea puts up her Endomondo posts on Facebook because for her, getting out there and running at all is in itself an achievement. I'm not sure if she actually enjoys it, yet (see what I did there, HPSS people?), but she keeps going, making small improvements and passing milestones, and most of all, she perseveres. Keeping going with running is harder for Andrea than for me, and that

Or: why do I seem to start all over again, every single year? How does a cricket injury to my hand bring all of my other exercise and activity to a screaming halt? I'm not sure I understand, except that it has - a broken finger and a sprained wrist mean that my fitness bootcamp was a complete write-off even before the holidays, and if I try running, they just ache.  And now I'm feeling scratchy and want to get back into things for several reasons: - I have had a very enjoyable holiday season, and I need to counter-balance that (we all know what I mean...) - I want to feel strong and healthy, and I just don't. - I am lucky to have been selected to roadtest some new shoes but they arrived three days after I broke myself, and I haven't been fulfilling my part of that bargain #asicsroadtest #gt2000roadtest #newshoes - more about this in my next post! - I need to score some runs before the pink small person pulls ahead again, so I need to be fit for the resu

I will go for a run this afternoon... later... probably... I forced myself to go for one yesterday morning too, which will be two in a weekend. Which is way better than the about four in the last month. But it was hard, and I did more walking than I should really need to. What has happened? I was doing so well! I was going out for long runs and enjoying it and now suddenly it's all just got hard. I don't understand. Maybe it's because the weather has got warmer and I get really overheated and fainty. And because running when it's warm is not my favourite that either means I have to get up early (hmm, what?!) or go out around dinner time, which is just a little inconvenient. I love daylight saving and summer, except in terms of exercise. Or it could be because things got a wee bit busy for a while and I got out of routine with the school holidays and my fitness all just fell off. It does that, which is very discouraging.  Or it could be because I hav

About, ummm, maybe 6 weeks or so ago, I'm not sure, my scales ran out of batteries. And they were warning me for about 4 weeks before that that the batteries were low, so I can't say that I haven't had plenty of opportunity to get a new battery. But I haven't.  Generally I am a religious scales watcher, every morning before breakfast, watching myself track up and down, being happy with the losses and working out the whys  or justifying  the gains.  The scales in question, relegated to the far corner of the bathroom. But in the last however long it has been, I have found a kind of freedom in not doing that. I have begun thinking that it is not about numbers when I measure my fitness and health, or at least, not about those numbers. I kindof started feeling this way when I was getting compliments for looking trim, but it was because although I was running, I was in the throes of worrying about the blue small person, and so not eating properly, and I was fe

I was going to write a completely different post, and I might try to get to that one next week, but a couple of things have happened this weekend, just small things, but significant, that have made me think that I might do a bit of reflecting about well-being right now. The first of those things was that I ran into a friend that I hadn't seen for quite a long time outside the supermarket; we're both local and up until ... actually I'm not sure exactly when, we have both been going to the same fitness group, but we just haven't seen each other at all this year. In the catch-up that we had, we discovered what each other has been doing and just why we had no idea what each other was doing and it came from a comment that I hadn't been blogging and posting for a while, so what was I up to...? Then, this afternoon, I read my boss's blog ( Principal Possum ) and began to feel a bit inspired, and to feel that I too might have turned a corner in the things that

Sometimes there are just lots of little things that you have to do, and they are not necessarily hard or bad things, but there are just so many of them. That's what I feel like at the moment, and I'm trying to find various ways of dealing with them. Method 1: Run away.  Well not quite, but this morning I just had to stick Skrillex  on shuffle and see how far a slow jog could take me - quite far as it turns out, even if I did walk the big hills. I don't recommend this for everyone, but your music and your activity should work. For me, this gives me time and headspace to think about how I might attack all of the things . I find that this kind of assessment phase is really important, because if I don't take a step back from what's bugging me, it will keep on bugging me without any sort of plan for resolution, but if I take a reasonable amount of time to look at possibilities, I can usually come up with some sort of a plan that will get me organised with all