Reasonably Fit

Or: When not to do stuff. Today was the perfect day to get out for a run, the sun was shining but there was a chill in the air, the small people were elsewhere, and I just really wanted to try a new way that looks longer but flatter. But I forgot a few important things: Like; that I had given blood yesterday evening, and as well as the pint I gave them, I also did an extra bit of bleeding, you know, just because I could. And like; that the pink small person spent the later part of the evening having a couple of casual vomits, you know, just because she could, and so my sleep was half listening to see if there were any more. And like; I had just driven three hours to drop the fully-recovered, box-of-fluffies pink small person to the Grandparents but retained the blue one as his head had imploded.  But well, who thinks of that stuff, and anyway, does it really matter? It turns out that it does! Even as I was running up the driveway (which is not steep) I was thin...

... the tough reassess and re-prioritise. Life has taken one of those turns where it all just gets a bit complicated. Part of that is my own fault - I might have taken on a few too many things all at once - but part of it is just the way things happen. There is a big difference between being busy and having  things  happen. Usually I am busy, and that is fine. I chase around after the small people and their multifarious (wow, see that word!) activities; get my planning, marking and reporting done at the very last minute; do a bit of volunteering at the local Cricket club and a bit of extra-curricular study; unpack a random box or take stuff to the Sallies from the move that happened a couple of months ago; catch up with my MTB crew or the Wine Ladies; and try and be a bit fit and healthy around all of that. However, the last couple of months have brought  things . Firstly, the blue small person has been unwell. We have had a couple of hospital visits and all...

and blind corners... I've been mulling this post for a while as it's not really a health and fitness one, so much as a shout-out to where I live and the genuinely nice people who also live here. I live in the country. It's not so far out of the city that I can't go shopping or anything, but I am surrounded by farmland, and bush, and serenity, and community. All of these things are really important to me, but it's the community that I appreciate every time I go out running. Living in the country, I run on country roads. Some of them have footpaths, but not many. Some have a hard shoulder, but not all. Some of them are gravel, even, but not too many. Some of them are so narrow there isn't even a centre line, including my own road. But what I find is that no matter where I am, people driving on those roads are respectful of my right to be on that road too. Every single car on the road moves over and gives me plenty of room. They pretty much all cro...

as Kermit the Frog once said... A few weeks ago, my fitness coach shared a facebook post for another trainer who had a special offer on. I had a look into it and decided to do the particular 6-week course that she was advertising.  Why? Well, because I think I just need to do something a little bit different to get things underway again. I have been running my own programme and whilst I know that I can ramp up the running fitness for an event if I want to, the health side of things is a bit harder to know what to do. I've been a bit busy lately, and feeling rather exhausted. I don't feel that I've been eating that well, or maybe that I have been having a few more extra bits added into a generally healthy menu than I probably should have. I've also been having some of those 'wonderful' things happen that many ladies in their late forties (horrible thought) naturally start to have. And I haven't figured out how to deal with those - this course is d...

Well not quite nothing, I have been to my fitness class the last two Tuesdays, but apart from that, nothing . In  my last post  I was doing so well, fitting the run things in around all the other things. There is only one problem with that; it is very easy to let the other things get bigger and not quite manage to fit the run things in.  To start with, it felt good. I was giving my body a rest. Because maybe I had been pushing things a little too hard with all those fitting in bits here and there, and it felt like everywhere. And as I've said before, I'm not that person who can do everything; possibly I was trying too hard... The second week of nothing, though, I started to feel a bit scratchy. Now I couldn't fit things in and I was starting to resent it, and get grumpy. But the pattern of that first week off held for the second. There are lots of reasons why I couldn't quite get out there. We have a provisional move in date for the new house (yay!), whi...

and making opportunities... In the last few weeks, since I have been back at work, I have found that life has been incredibly busy - prepping classes, doing stuff for the house build, getting small people to all of their places, beginning my next uni paper, co-ordinating cricket things*... These are all things that I enjoy doing, they are all very satisfying, but they all take a lot of time! Having started again, again, with a burst of motivation, I have been wanting to keep things going, but to fit things in around all that stuff seemed almost impossible. Then I thought to myself that actually, the small people are not so small any more, they do not need me to be there all of the time, and things like sports practices are pretty boring really... A few weeks ago I decided to test my theory. The blue small person had three weeks of football trials of a Wednesday afternoon, for just over an hour, surely I could fit a sneaky 5km in there? So I put my gear in the car in the mo...

Spoiler alert: this is another introspective mental health one... As I was out running this evening, after a full-on day, feeling half-knackered before I even started, I actually asked myself out loud - "why am I even doing this?". Why was I trying to fit yet another thing into a crazy Monday? Why wasn't I at home leisurely making dinner? When was relaxing  even going to start? But then I thought about one of the events in my crazy day, which was intense, but very rewarding, and that reminded me.  Earlier today I spoke to one of my colleagues' classes. It is a Health class and they are looking at resilience in the face of challenging health circumstances. So I was speaking to them about my series of miscarriages before we managed to find the small people, and then my post-natal depression afterwards. Like I said, pretty intense, both for me, but I suspect also for the poor year 12s who had no idea what was about to drop on them.  One of my strategies fo...