Juneathon Day 10: A (downward) dog’s life

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Yoga tonight, which was certainly beneficial as a) I’ve been satisfyingly achey in various limbs this week and b) I’ve learned just how tight my left achilles tendon is.

It’s been niggling after lolloping for a couple of miles, nothing too painful, I’m just aware of it and don’t like it. Tonight we did lots of lovely leg stretches, including some in downward facing dog where we had to ‘walk the dog’ by bending alternate knees. I found that I can get my right foot flat on the floor, but you could fit a copy of War and Peace under my left heel and still have room for Heat magazine. So I’m now on the hunt for some more good stretches to avoid anything going twang in the near future.

It’s gently tipping down with rain here – splendid for the garden, rubbish for me having to drag myself out at 6.15 tomorrow morning (any athletic endeavour will be offset by going out for Thai tomorrow night). On a normal month, I’d be thinking of excuses already, but seeing as its Juneathon… AND I’ve just had my hair cut which normally sees at least a 24 hour embargo on exercise (it’s a bit like giving blood….) so the only people to have seen my good hair will be Husband (currently being smacked in the face by panda heads on the wii before I have to give it back tomorrow) and yoga people. The sacrifices we make for the cause eh?

Juneathon Day 9: White rabbit syndrome

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Having one of those days where I feel like I’m rushing about and not achieving anything. Running to stand still even.

Luckily this was offset by a nice run with my pal the running bully and the rest of the group. 3.75 miles and home to a lovely Husband-made tea.

We talked a lot about motivation while we were out (mine’s up, her’s is down), it’s a funny old thing.

Juneathon day 8: Bring on the plus fours…

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Yesterday I thought that I wouldn’t have chance to do anything new and exciting this week, but it turns out that husband (who needs a good, non-twee nickname for me to refer to him as. Oh, no,  apparently he’s happy being husband, the least I can do is upgrade him to being a proper noun) has an idea….

So after a quick forage around tesco, we’re off to the driving range. At first glance this plan seems flawed in so many ways. I have a slightly suspicious view of golf (the same way that other people see Morris dancing or late night text messaging services on Five). I have incredibly rubbish shoulders, no sense of balance and struggle to organise my limbs to do anything more than the most simple of tasks. I’m terrible at not being good at things and get very ratty with Husband when he tries to teach me stuff.

One hour, a basket of balls and a golf stick later… I’ve managed to find and lose my rhythm at whacking them down the grassy bit, narrowly avoided taking off the head of the bloke six booths down from me, chipped several so close that I can nip on and retrieve the ball without being shouted at, realised that golf is a lot harder than it looks and managed to confuse the automatic tee by my attempts at either belting a chunk out of the astroturf or gently wafting the club over the ball.

I hate to say it, but I quite enjoyed myself, though I suspect that my shoulders and back will be grizzly in the morning. They’re still recovering from Wii-fit boxing on Saturday night.

Juneathon’s really made me ponder on several things this week, but I should crack on with my presentation so I’ll have to keep pondering til another post. It’s certainly made me realise that Juneathon is wonderful for procastinating…

Juneathon day 7

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As planned, I went out with my husband and plodded 5 miles around the village. The plodding was hard work – it was warmer than I expected and I’d forgotten how long it was since I’d done more than 3ish miles. There’s also something about running together that turns me into a particularly unlikeable, whingy 6 year old (practically getting to the foot stamping “my legs don’t work…”) kind of stage after a whole 10 minutes. Although I had the upper hand by having the house key, I was annoying myself so snaped out of it and on we went.

I’m not from the village where we live, but he has lived here all his life. As a result, trips around the village are interspersed with pointed out landmarks of where he used to deliver papers, went with his family or got drunk up trees. I also got to see three disused mines and where they used to hide priests.

I needed a couple of walking breaks and found that it was one of those runs where it was my head letting me down – I found it very easy to wimp out of hills and the like. At the end, we were both very hot and sweaty, and although I was a bit disappointed with the time, we did what we set out to do.

So that’s a week of Juneathon completed.

Juneathon week one:

  • 14ish miles run
  • One hour’s unco-ordinated flailing aerobics
  • One and a half hour’s yoga
  • One and a bit hour’s Wii fit

Juneathon Day 6 – Thank you Juneathon people!

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Hmmm. Weekend plans went a little awry. It started last night when I realised I have to do a presentation at work next Monday. I’ve no work time to work on it and have stuff on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights and we realised we want to get away for a bit of a weekend camp next weekend which rules out Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This also potentially rules out new and exciting exercise for a week.

I cancelled my scheduled run with the running bully (who seemed moderately relieved) and spent today with a table covered in journal articles and everyone’s chum, Powerpoint.

Just when I was getting a bit fed up with the idea of failing at day 6 (I can be a bit all or nothing with my thinking when things don’t go to plan), I had a read through of people’s blogs (obviously not while working on my presenation, no sir…) and realised the motivating power of Juneathon.

I learned

  1. I’m not the only one finding today to be a hard day for doing something
  2. Reading Running & Thinking reminded me that I have possession of a Wii for another 48 hours and as such, I clocked up an hour or so on the aerobic and balance games. I particularly enjoyed being a penguin
  3. If it wasn’t for Juneathon, I would have sat on my bum watching crap telly

Got a rural 5 miles planned tomorrow, am taking husband and his local knowledge so I don’t get lost…

Oh, and I walked to the library which is a whole 0.3 miles (with a very heavy hardback book).