Category: The Athons

Juneathon day one – couch to 5k week 5 day 2

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Even though I started this year’s Janathon, it was only a couple of months after having Mini-Ginge, I was still banned from doing any high impact exercise and I felt I had a decent excuse for taking it easy. He is now nearly eight months old and I’m slowly but surely getting back to running. I feel that I should make a proper go of Juneathon. I thought that I’d considered all the issues that would make this year more challenging; the tiredness, the wonky pelvic floor, the difficulty getting out for early morning runs, the dodgy hip and back, the potentially still lax ligaments, the tiredness… What I didn’t account for was that even leaving the house would take so flipping long.

With hindsight, it might have been my own fault, but before I left I decided to peek in on Mini-Ginge just to make sure that he was settled in his cot. As I looked in the room, a head popped up and a pair eyes stared out at me in the gloom. His gaze met mine. I tried to back away, but it was too late. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

A few cuddles and a couple of verses of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star later and I thought it was safe to leave. I stood up. His face crumpled. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

At this point I handed over to Ginge but the WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHs continued, punctuated with a few of his hungry cries. This was a situation that I was hoping to avoid because once my sports bra is on, the door to the buffet is firmly locked. If wearing a nursing bra is like nipping to the cash machine when you need a tenner, wearing a sports bra is like getting your tenner from deep in the vaults of the Bank of England*.

I left the boy blowing raspberries in his cot and legged it.

Today’s legging it consisted of 8 minutes running, 5 minutes running, 8 minutes running. This was the first time that the return leg would see me running all the way home and it was both liberating and frustrating not looking at my watch to see how many minutes I had left. Instead I kept on picking out landmarks in the distance to split up the distance until I was home.

My next session sees me leap up from 8 minutes to 20 minutes of running. I have no idea who was doing the maths for this one, but clearly they forgot about all of the possible numbers between 8 and 20. I am a little terrified.

*I originally wrote Fort Knox, which does read better but then the pedant in me realised that you’d really struggle to get a tenner from there.

Janathon day twelve: useful walking

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Today’s walk was a very practical one. After two false starts getting Mini-Ginge dressed (two incidents, one at each end…) we were all suitably wrapped up with the mission of calling round at my sister’s with a birthday present then carrying on into town to pick up something from Argos and get some supplies for tea.

It turns out we can fit loads on the parcel shelf of the pram, but I really should learn not to be conned into pushing on the return leg because (a) the pram is a lot heavier and (b) it is uphill. The round trip came in at 6.25 miles, but I think it was nearer 6.5 because I forgot to turn on my Garmin.

In other news, I have well and truly fallen off the Physio wagon. Last time I did it, the one that I’m struggling with actually felt easier (on on side at least) so of course I’ve not done them since. Idiot.

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Janathon day eleven: back to the valley

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Another walk down (and up) Cuerden Valley today, this time with Ginge and starting from the opposite end to last time. This one was just over two miles (precise mileage not known because I forgot that I had Miles in my pocket and then we had to solve the mystery of the missing satellites) and took in the lake…

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…and lots of trees. Some of them upright…

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…and some of them, well, less so.

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Janathon day nine (ahem) and ten (that’s better)

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Day nine: move along folks, there’s nothing to see here. I fell off the Athon wagon yesterday; the weather was rubbish, the skies were grey and heavy, and the rain fell, heavy and steady. It was not a day to take a small boy outside. I had planned to do a bit of yoga or something in the evening, but the small boy was a hungry boy and could not be persuaded to go to bed until gone midnight and by that time I was knackered.

Day ten: Today we went for a walk with gran – 50 minutes, 2.3 miles (I have shaken Miles – my Garmin – out of retirement) up and down the lanes, with a short sharp hill in the middle, and then back along the canal towpath…

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…said hello to some horses…

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…and watched a murder of crows swoop and gather in the trees.

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Janathon day seven: back to basics

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Today was a bit action-packed, well as action-packed as we get at the moment. We managed to make it nearly on time for the mother and baby thing that we go to (by nearly on time, I mean that it was nearer to the start time than it was to the end time…), scooted home, walked up to the doctors’ surgery, had jabs done, came home for food and cuddles, went to Tesco (Mini-Ginge travelling in his sling, more to satisfy my need for trauma-related cuddles than anything), came home, had more food and cuddles and at 7.30ish, I hared out of the door to go to my first proper yoga class for nearly six months.

Phew.

It was lovely to get back to yoga, if only because it is a tiny sliver of normality for me. I’ve learnt that when you stop doing your normal activities that define you (for me that includes work, knitting, running, sitting around the house with no greater plan than sitting) and take on one defining role (mum) it can be a bit, well, overwhelming. So getting back on the mat felt like an important step. I’m not sure what it’s a step towards, but it’s a step.

As it was the first class back and the opening session of a new course, our teacher took us back to basics and invited us to go into it with “a beginner’s mind”. She advised us that we should have no expectations about our bodies and their capabilities, and that having expectations often led to frustrations when things don’t go according to plan. It was as if she had written the introduction with me in mind. I keep comparing my relatively fit, strong, healthy pre-baby body with what I have now. If I look at it from my usual perspective, it’s not as good as it used to be. If I look at it with the eyes that my teacher wanted, I still have a relatively fit, strong, healthy body, I just have to rediscover what it can do if I ask it.

Physio exercises 6/7