Week 9 and new hair

Today was the first day of week 9 in the couch to 5km running challenge, that is the first day of the FINAL WEEK.  Firstly I have to say WOOHOO – I have actually stuck with an exercise program for 8 weeks.  During that time I have only missed one day of running and that wasn’t because I was too lazy to get out of bed it was because I was already out of bed and at work before 6.30am.  On no planet it is right to get up to run for half an hour before a super early run so I attempted to run the following day but again work conspired against me and then we went away for the weekend and it rained so much that I thought I was going to be washed away!  Instead I postponed my Friday run until Monday making the start of the new running week occur on Wednesday.

It still messes with my head that my running week doesn’t coincide with a real week and in the past that would have been enough for me to throw in the towel and give up entirely.  That was about a month ago and I am still out and about bright and early trying to clock up the miles.  Week 9 brings 30 minutes of running with NO STOPPING.  Essentially I am lazy and am quick to find excuses for not exercising so I am pretty chuffed that I can now run for half an hour!

I checked mapmyrun.com to see how far I ran and at 28 minutes I was running just over 4.5km so by adding on the extra 2 minutes that will boost my run to almost the 5km suggested in the title.  I will have to map another marker to aim for to hit the 5km mark by this time next week.  Then what?  Do I continue at the 5km until I can run that distance or do I go a little further?  Should I add in another exercise program on the alternate days, perhaps go back to shredding?  Who knows what I will do next but I feel awesome having actually achieved something real.  Yay me!

And in completely unrelated news I HAD MY HAIR CUT LAST NIGHT.  People who actually know me know I haven’t been to a hairdressers in years so last night was a big step for me.  My hair has been coloured – yay no more grey, is about 6 inches shorter than it was and has layers.  It is all new for me and kind of exciting.  I tried to take a photo to show my pretty hair but the kids heard photo booth kick in to action so instead of showing you a photo of my new hair I leave you with this

My Monsters

and this!

Crazy Faces

FACT – my running skills totally bite

My case in point

Monday, week 5 day 3 I missed Friday due to an extra early start and couldn’t play catch up due to extra work, a weekend away and bucket loads of rain.  Anyway, back to the story, Monday week 5 day 3 involved a 5 minute warm up followed by 20 minutes of jogging and a 5 minute cool down.  20 minutes of jogging WITHOUT STOPPING.  Let’s just say that it nearly killed me but I managed to shuffle around very slowly for 20 minutes.

Today, week 6 day 1 was the typical 5 minute warm up and cool down and the running part consisted of a 5 minute jog, 3 minute walk, 8 minute jog, 3 minute walk and a 5 minute jog.  Now while I felt just as crappy running today as I did on Monday, I ran further, way further.

Now I admit that I am no genius but lets do the maths here…

Monday run = 20 minutes

Wednesday run = 5 + 8 + 5 = 18 minutes

Therefore I had a whole 2 minutes more of running on Monday and should have travelled more distance.  Admittedly there was the walking in-between section of 3 + 3 minutes, but that is only 6 minutes.  Now I get that 6 minutes of walking, even at my deathly slow pace that involves far too much daydreaming and looking for starfish should or could be faster than 2 minutes of jogging, but it shouldn’t be that much difference.  I was almost back to the start of the loop, to the cool down section before I had even begun the last 5 min jogging section.  In fact I had to slightly extend my running track and that extra section happened to involve a small hill and a set of stairs to ensure that I actually had room to finish the run component of the training.

So there you have it, my amazing running ability, some math and it isn’t even 7.30 yet.  Time to get going for the day and stop all this thinking

In less than 8 short hours I will be back at work.  Logic says that knowing that I have to go in to work extra early would equate to going to bed at a reasonable hour, but like I mentioned, that would be logical.  Me I sat around waiting for a late game of netball because everyone knows that there is nothing like playing sport instead of sleeping.  Now that I am back from netball, I am sweaty and smelly and in need of a shower.

Damn, I have just realised that if I am going to start work at 6.30am, the time that I would normally be enjoying the peace and quiet of the pre-dawn day trying to run around the river.  It is going to throw out my schedule completely.  My dilemma, do I get up extra extra early to run tomorrow, try to run after work tomorrow or early Saturday morning before work?  Do I just give myself a break and take a day off knowing that the plan for Week 5 Day 3 includes a 20 minute run WITHOUT STOPPING.   I think that is scaring me more than anything but I don’t want to chicken out this far into the program.

In other news, I am picturing a few days of no internet and I don’t know what I will do.  I struggle at work not having real internet access so having no access will be even more challenging.  Actually I do know what I will do, I will be busy.  After an extra long day at work tomorrow I am spending the evening with friends, decorating cupcakes, eating takeout because who really wants to cook after a long long week?  Just for something new, I will be working briefly on Saturday before heading off for a weekend in the country.  Man-child is going skydiving on Sunday morning so we decided to make a weekend of it and head bush to try and relax.  Although with 2 kids who will want to explore everywhere, I don’t imagine that there will be too much time for relaxing.  However there will be plenty of time to take photos!

At some stage I also have to finish off 3 puppy dog costumes for girl-child and her friends for their school performance next week.  I have no idea when that will happen.  I think that I will be forgoing sleep at some stage.  Perhaps I should think about going to bed some time soon, or perhaps my macbook will decide for me and run out of batteries and force me to sleep instead of catching up in the online world.

Next!

Reasons to call it a day and curl up in bed.

Being Wednesday it is one of my self imposed must run days.  Now most mornings I have woken before the alarm sounds adn I am in that restful state of anticipation for the day to begin and am feeling somewhat good.  Today the alarm goes off when I am in a dead sleep and it frightens me awake, causing me to frighten the cat who then manages to scratch my shoulder as she is woken.  I don’t let myself go back to sleep, instead I get up and grab the rest of my running gear and sneak down stairs.  I hear boy-child stirring so I wait on the stairs for a few minutes, ensuring he settles back to sleep before continuing.

I make it down stairs safely and finish dressing.  I realise that I have left my polar fleece vest upstairs, the one with the zip pockets so I don’t have to carry my phone.  Oh well, it won’t kill me to have to carry the phone.  Damn, my socks have holes in them.  I knew they had holes in them when I put them on last night I was just to lazy to do anything about it then.  Then the trifecta, I can’t find my ear buds.  Now how am I supposed to do the couch to 5km if I can’t hear the prompts?  I check the bench, where I last saw them and remembered putting them there.  No joy.  I checked my bag thinking that in some deluded manner that I had actually put them away.  Totally delusional.  I had no choice and go back upstairs to get a pair of emergency ear buds from the study, the ones that are classed as emergency only as they don’t fit my phone properly with this cover on it.  Still, better than nothing.  I grab my vest whilst I am upstairs, of course I forgot to get different socks.

That whole process of getting ready to go, something that literally takes 5 minutes today took 15.  Off to a great start.  Eventually, out I go into the cold Melbourne morning, flick on the couch to 5km drop the phone into my pocket and start my ‘brisk’ walk warmup.  I get to the point on my walk when the jog noise sounds, but nothing.  I check my phone only to see that it had turned itself (the c25km program) off.  I switch it back on and continue walking.  I checked a few minutes later to see that it had turned itself off again.  I gave up on putting the phone back in my pocket and continued on.  By the time my warm-up was complete I had been out for more than 10 minutes.  On a normal day I would be on the home stretch, today I hadn’t even started the hard part, the actual running part.

The running part wasn’t too bad, despite the timing being all wrong meaning I had to run cross country to get over the bridge and then down the steps the other side.  No drama really, but I prefer to walk this section if the timing is right – I try to not be running in public, especially when it is daylight.  Besides when I run over the bridge I have a compulsive urge to stretch my tired stride to ensure that I only do one step in each square of concrete on the path and that is more exhausting than normal running.

The recovery walk after running was much appreciated but before long it was time for the second 8 minute run.  Now considering that it was much later in the loop that I began this run, I was too close to home.  I had to extend the loop and go cross country to avoid being hit by cyclists.  I finished the run component of the program over the road from home.  I could see that the light was on in the kids room so instead of wandering around the park to cool down I came in expecting to deal with tired grumpy kids.

I staggered in to a quiet house.  Yes the lights were on but no one was up.  It was the perfect time to sit down and catch up on blogging instead of cooling down.  I know I will pay for it later in the day and tomorrow but sitting is good.

The kids finally came downstairs and have insisted on making their own breakfast – flavour porridge from a box.  I guess the least I could do is get their lunch ready and get organised for the day.  Perhaps it will be a decent day after all.

Edited to add – perhaps not so decent.  I went to have a nice hot shower to escape the noise of two hyperactive kids only to find that today hot really is only tepid, and only tepid when there is no cold water turned on.  My hot shower was not to be.  In fact it was so cold that I shivered until my nose bled.  It is still cold, I am still cold but at least I am not smelly any more.  Such a beautiful start to the day.  Surely it can only get better?

Still Running

I haven’t mentioned it for a week or so, but I am still doing the Couch 2 5km running challenge.  I haven’t mentioned that it wasn’t as hard as I expected.  I mean, it still hurt but I was surviving.  In fact, last week during Week 3 I actually jogged more than was required because I felt like I hadn’t really exerted myself.  Lets just say that that lulled me into a false sense of security.  Week 3 consisted of two cycles of 90 second jog, 90 second walk, 3 minute jog and a 3 minute walk.  It seemed strange to go from a 3 minute walk into a 5 minute cooldown walk and that was where I inadvertently ran an extra 90 seconds and survived.  During week 4 I feel like I have been sucker punched.  After the standard 5 minute walk to warm up it was straight into 2 cycles starting with a 3 minute jog, a 90 second walk, a 5 minute jog with a 2 1/2 minute walk between the cycles.  Now for someone who is fit and runs regularly running for 5 minutes would be nothing but for someone as unfit as I am, 5 minutes is a really really long time.  Fortunately I can’t look ahead to see what world of pain I will be in next week.

I am kind of proud of sticking to the running plan for this long, I am almost half way to being able to run for half an hour and hopefully for 5km.

In other running related news, I would like to take the time to ‘thank’ the cyclist who was riding city bound and decided that it was an opportune moment to overtake a fellow rider, when facing oncoming traffic – namely me.  Thank you very kindly, I really appreciate being forced off a shared footway by an inconsiderate cyclist who is riding on the wrong side of the path.  I love running so much, even more when I am forced from the path and into the wet and muddy grass.  Again, thank you

It’s Cold

Really really cold.  I am just back from run/walking a loop of the river, Week 2 Day 3 of the Couch to 5K in fact (yay me!) and it is cold.  It is so cold that the water temperature was higher than the air temperature and it looked like steam drifting up from the water.  I didn’t actually realise until I was home and the sun was attempting to rise that there was quite an extensive coverage of frost on the grass.

Right now as I try to warm up, I am enjoying the few minutes of peace and quiet that I am likely to experience for the day.  Yes I know I should get lunches organised and all of that but the peace and quiet it so blissfully quiet that I have to sit and enjoy it.

I am hoping that I will feel alive enough to catch up with the blog world this evening and fill you in on my insane week.  I am hoping that I have the energy to drive to my parents house this afternoon.  I am hoping that by spending the weekend with my family it will be remotely possible that I can have a restful weekend and actually recover from the lurgy that has been knocking me about all week.  I am hoping that my work day will be enjoyable and not political, but I think I am more likely to recover from the lurgy than have a restful day at work, I am not expecting miracles.  Happy Friday. 

Just Quickly… OUCH!

Yesterday was awesome, hiking down and back up Mt Macedon, enjoying the views but as a result I am sore, really sore.  

Mt Macedon

It is noon and I am in my jammies and monster slippers, shuffling around the house trying to clean up and everything hurts.  I really really want to sit and write about the awesomeness that was my day but unfortunately the house doesn’t clean itself.  I will try to use my want to blog as a reward for a clean house.  Perhaps I will be back later…

Reasons to NOT go for a run

1. It is dark out
2. I woke to the sound of rain falling on the roof
3. I had a monster nose bleed (hooray for head colds)
4. I couldn’t find my earbuds
5. I could do with a few extra minutes of sleep

Despite the ever increasing list of excuses to crawl back into bed and get a few more minutes of sleep I wandered downstairs.  I found some really crappy headphones to use and was soon on my way.  I may of sniffed, bled and coughed through the warm up but I did it.  I even ran fairly fast (in Del speed) for the first half.  Admittedly by the second half I was much slower and my walking intervals could hardly be called brisk.  Yay, go me – week 1 day 2 is done!

And Rest

A friend who is a teacher commented yesterday that she wasn’t looking forward to today, to school resuming, wondering if that made her a bad teacher.  I responded with by telling her that I am looking forward to school going back.  Does that make me a bad mother?   

Anyway, today is the day.  Not only is it the day that school goes back, it is the day that I cling on to the wagon, trying desperately to get on board (again).  So at dark o’clock, I was up and out of bed, dragging my sorry arse around the river for day 1 of the Couch to 5K.  Did I mention that this was as dark o’clock and you know it was dark, really dark.  Oh and cold too only 6 degrees.    

I huffed and puffed my way around the track doing the prescribed walking and running, hoping that when my phone would ding to say that it was time for me to change activities I wouldn’t be passing other early morning nutbags.  The dings were in my favour this morning, not because my timing was impeccable but because there weren’t many crazy people out in the cold today.  I managed to run when I was supposed to, for the entire time.  I am feeling pretty good about that, it was a decent start to the day.  By walk/running the entire time I finished the loop quicker than I would normally run it, back in the days when I went running regularly.  Clearly, despite running regularly back then, I didn’t run quickly.  I am looking forward to actually being able to run the river loop one day.  All going well, that day will be in 9 weeks, just in time for the next lot of school holidays.

So here I am.  The sun has barely risen, the kids are up and about and hopefully getting dressed and ready for school, although judging by the sounds of stomping and thumping I can hear overhead they are more likely to b playing kamikaze off the bunks.   Here’s to a great term of predictability and routine where kids go to school on school days, weekends are for fun and all is well in the land of superRelish.

Minor Collisions

My worlds almost had a mini collision tonight and it was kind of weird.  I played netball and it was a great game, surprisingly enough we won!  Anyway, to celebrate the game or realistically the fact that we played an early game and still had an evening ahead of us, we all went to the pub for a drink.  As we arrived, I ran into a friend from the kids school who was there to meet with other mums and attempt to be creative.  

It was a great night sitting around and actually getting to know the other players in the team in a social setting.  There are some fantastic people on the team that are really interesting and dynamic and did I mention young?  It wasn’t that they are physically all younger, but they are all engaged or newly married and have no kids.  They all have the ability to go out whenever they want, to play sport as often as they like and I guess to some extent they can be selfish.  

It was refreshing to be there with new and exciting people.  Instead of feeling old or so much older than the ‘young uns’, I actually felt young and involved.  I didn’t feel out of place at all knowing that my monsters were tucked in safe and sound in their beds as man-child played poker with friends.  

What was strange was having two different elements of my world meet.  I am a very much a mum and there is no disputing that; I have kids, I do the trek to school each day, I have different projects that I undertake with and for the kids, I like to knit or sew or generally be creative, in essence I do mum-like things.  I also love to be sporty, or pretend to be.  I love playing netball, I am back coaching football and I love being involved in soccer even if I don’t know all the rules.  Being involved in sports and the outdoor/active lifestyle (although netball is played indoors) is very much a part of who I am.  

I guess what I am trying to get at is that there were 2 very different groups at the same venue that represented who I am but the differences in the two groups were astounding, with little or nothing in common.  It wasn’t a bad thing, just something interesting that I thought I would write about as I contemplate sleep.