It's about time

I finally got my act together and went for a run this morning. About 25 minutes running, which is a current best. Hooray!

The head's in the right space and things are going well.

Yay me!

Curse my haunted leg

I really should be heading off to bed in order to get up early for a long delayed run tomorrow but thought I'd put in a quick post.

Firstly, the long delayed running is due a persistent ache in my right leg. The ache in and of itself doesn't stop me running but I'm assuming that running on an aching leg may not be the best idea. Given that this ache comes and goes, not always being easily related to something that I've done, I have come to the conclusion that my leg is haunted. Surely there's no other rational explanation.

Now, onto my evening. Tonight I went and saw Sherlock Holmes with a couple of friends. The movie was alright. I'm glad to have seen it but I'm not going to rave about it.

One of the friends I saw the movie with is my previously mentioned 'crush' friend. It's so distracting when you're sitting in a dark theatre. But I made it through the night without having a restraining order issued against me.

The past month (or so)

Has been pretty interesting.

I have achieved one of my major goals for 2009 - get a new job and move back to Melbourne. Yep, it's done. I drove down today and am camping with the parental until Wednesday when my furniture arrives and I can move into my new place.

It's been a hectic few weeks - I've driven the Hume more times than I care to attend interviews and house hunt. But it was worth it with two job offers in a matter of weeks, one of which is a job I've been wanting for many years (and not surprisingly is the job I took) and a nice big flat in a good area (fingers crossed). I've been keeping this under my hat because I developed a huge case of the superstitions once things looked like they might be coming together. I'm still having reservations about posting this now.

So, I'm waiting for the excitement to kick in because it is really exciting. I'm pretty sure it will happen once the moving is finished and I've started work and everyting is settled. Yay!

Excellent week

After a week of just putting my head down and trudging along the path I've come back out into the light.


I have, for the first time in a REALLY long time, managed to get through seven consecutive days where I've stayed on track with my food and it wasn't even a struggle. This gave me a massive boost of confidence. I then had two days of not quite so great tracking but as I went up to Brisbane on a flying visit for the majority of those two days, I'm actually quite OK with that.


My flying visit to Brisbane was at the request of my sister, who bought two tickets to Pink many, many months ago (as she is a massive fan). Unfortunately, her friends in Brisbane also had bought their own tickets, so she was left with a spare and really wanted to go with someone who would appreciate the show. She asked me, despite the fact that I am not a big Pink follower. But I do love music in general, especially live music, and the opportunity to spend a 'sister' day was too good to pass up. So off I flew to a lovely 26 degree Brisbane day on Thursday. It was fabulous! Sis and I hung out, shopped and had a great time; I had lunch with my grandma; and I must concede that the Pink show was good. I enjoyed myself, sang along with whatever bits of songs I knew, made up the words for the bits I didn't and most importantly, my sister absolutely loved the show and really enjoyed her experience. As an added bonus for me, seeing Pink strutting around on stage wearing next to nothing was fairly good motivation to stay on the path of good choices.


Flying back to Canberra on Friday morning to be greeted by my car fully encased in a block of ice at the airport was less enjoyable. And rude shock after the balmy Brisbane weather.


But overall, I had an excellent week and I'm looking forward to the next seven days being even better.

Fake it

'til you make it.

Taking it one step at a time

I'm breaking my six week challenge into smaller chunks.

It's about time I realised (or maybe just owned up to) that I have the attention span of a goldfish and am driven by immediate gratification. I will always choose the short term 'pay off' over a longer term gain. Six weeks is waaaay too long for me.

While this concept is not new to me, it was during this morning's run that I thought to myself I needed to change things. A 5km run for me is essentially 25 200m runs. Sure, I think about the 5km but to get me around the course I am having this sort of dialogue:

"OK, start running. Let's just get to the end of this row of trees."

"Good, now remember to keep your shoulders relaxed and let's make it to the bottom of the hill there."

"OK, hill, it's alright, you only have to make it to the top."

"Hill is done. Can't stop now so let's just get to the end of the bridge."

"It's all downhill now, easy! Focus on your breathing."

"And to the bottom of the next hill. I wonder how much longer it will take for them to finish fixing the path so I don't have to do this hill anymore?"

"Right, up this hill. It's an easy one and then there's only one more until the end."

"That wasn't that bad. Onto the flower beds."

And so on. I'm sure you have no interest in hearing the rest of my run because, trust me, it doesn't get any more interesting.

So, six weeks is now three lots of two weeks. And the first two weeks (which is nearly half way over already!!) I'm now taking one hour at a time. I'm hoping if I manage two really good weeks then the next two can be eased back a bit.

This is the two weeks:

Today has not quite gone to plan - I didn't do the 40 minutes on Tuesday (only did 34) so had wanted to do a 6km run this morning (which would take me to 40mins) but I got out of bed a little bit too late for that. If I get to work just 5 minutes too late, getting a shower is hell. But I pushed myself on the 5km and took off another minute (there were some happy dances once I'd got my breath back) and I'm happy with something over nothing. Breakfast was a success - oats - I love 'em! And now I'm on my daily coffee. Oh, and I've done one bottle of water - three more to go today.

I apologise in advance if this gets tedious for anyone who bothers to read - but as I've said before, it's all about me and getting what I want.

Now, I know I tend to bang on about it a fair bit, but I really do love winter in Canberra!



It is true that leaving the warm cocoon of my bed was an epic struggle. And it is also true that the cold air does terrible things to my asthma. And the cold and dry leaves my skin looking horrible and red and flakey.



But I don't care. I love scarves. I love coats. I love gloves. I love rosy cheeks. I love that everything looks clearer. I love trees changing colour. I love the contrast of bare branches against a clear sky at dawn. And I love that on my lovely cold frosty run this morning and I took another minute off my 5km-ish lake lap time.