A blogless month

Yes. OK. I don't think the February daily posts were meant to be. It's been a while since I've gone a month without posting at all.

February was a rather depressing month in many ways. The weather was horrible. Lots of credit crunchiness on the news and on everyone's blogs, and the Australian bushfires. We are lucky not to live in such a flammable country; we're also lucky in that we, personally, haven't felt the effects of the economy in any serious way.

Lucky in many ways, in fact. I wish everyone else wasn't having such a bad time, though. (We're also worried about J's grandfather, who hasn't been well.)

What have I been doing while I wasn't blogging? Well, J's brother visited and we went for a snowy walk at Vane Farm, a nature reserve in Tayside.


(Click to go to my Flickr and a lot more photos - it was a beautiful day).

Then his parents came up for a weekend and we went to Crail (in Fife). J's grandfather was stationed there during WWII, so it has a bit of historical interest for the family. (This photograph does not fully capture how cold and windy it was.)



Apart from that, I did a lot of knitting:





This is my latest - the Halley's Comet Hat designed by Marnie McLean. It has a pretty flower (or comet, I suppose) on the top:



It's the first lacy pattern I've knitted and I'm very pleased with it. I also went to the Woolfish festival in St Abb's on Saturday and bought lovely handpainted and hand-dyed sock wool, so probably more socks are on the way...

The other thing I did this month is get back into the gym. My old gym is offering six-week basic training programmes, including a free one-hour induction. I've been out of the gym long enough that I felt I needed a refresher course, so I signed up. The induction was excellent (thanks, Bob) and I'm now halfway through my second week of weights and interval training on the treadmill.

I'm somewhat irritated by how weak and slow I am, but nonetheless, I've now been running more times than in the whole of 2008!

My fourth blogiversary was last week. 2008 was not a good year for fitness, mostly because I was working too hard (I seem to remember this happened last time I did a Master's degree...) Let's see if 2009 can be better.

Back on the bike

I have indeed been back on the bike and zooming all over the place. It's been hot this week (by British standards, anyway) and I'd no doubt have been very sticky were it not that I now have a cycling top.

I've had it for a while. It came from a shop called Mountain Warehouse, and was reduced to about tuppence in the sales, possibly because it says it's a size 18 but fits me (generally a size 14 or 16 on top) pretty well. It's grey and a darkish fuchsia pink; possibly not the colourway I'd have chosen first, but it makes me nicely visible to traffic, and (as I said), it was cheap. I've also acquired gloves, and I've been wearing knee-length baggy shorts this week and feeling almost like a proper cyclist.

I've noticed that I seem to be a lot more noticeable than usual when I'm wearing the "proper cyclist" kit. Over the last few days:

• Several waves and smiles from other cyclists, mostly togged up in much more impressive cycling gear
• Happy hen-nighters leaning out of the windows of a pink limo at one in the afternoon, calling "Keep pedalling darling!"
• Smiley young man at traffic lights with Afro hairstyle and American accent: "Live strong, lady!" (This is really not the sort of thing people tend to say to each other on the streets of Edinburgh.)
• Wolf-whistle from guy in van.

This is all rather a mystery to me, especially the last two. It's not as though the cycling kit is remotely revealing or anything. It must be the fuchsia. Or maybe it's the warm weather making everyone uninhibited.

I haven't been feeling all that attractive lately. Over the last few weeks, I've had to accept that the numbers on the scale have gone up a bit, and it isn't just a random fluctuation which will go down again next time. It's not very encouraging.

I know that some of it could be muscle from all the cycling - my bodyfat percentage has stayed much the same, and my thighs and core seem to have firmed up a bit. But my eating hasn't been fantastic, and there is definitely squidge on top of the muscle. Things have been a bit stressful* and busy lately, and there's been chocolate at work, and that's not a very good combination. I need to take in grapes or something to nibble instead, but I keep forgetting because I am pathetic sometimes.

On the other hand, I have now had my last podiatry appointment for a while, and my feet seem to be working well with the orthotics. Unless I develop another problem, I don't have to go back for four to six years - and I don't have to go through my GP again if I do. I can just phone the clinic and make an appointment directly.

In preparation for the Last Podiatry Appointment, I got myself to Run and Become and bought myself some new running shoes so I could get the podiatrist to take a look at them. Unlike the last pair, these were properly fitted; they have a neutral footbed (not one designed to correct pronation) but the insole lifts up and the orthotic fits underneath. As with the ordinary shoes I've bought, it was a bit tricky to find shoes that were both deep enough to take the orthotic and wide enough for my duck-like feet, but I'm fairly confident.

I have yet to take them for their first run, partly because it's got to be a trial run on the treadmill just in case they aren't right and I have to swap them. The plan is to pay for a single session at my old gym and see how I do, and then join the beginners' group in the running club I used to belong to at work. That's if I haven't lost my ability to do this in the year I've been off. Wish me luck.

*The stress probably deserves a post of its own, but the short version is that J is still having problems with depression and OCD, not sleeping well, and finding it very hard to leave the house to go to work in the mornings. Not good. I am pretty busy with work and coursework, and I'm not able to provide as much support as I want to. No doubt this too will pass...

Humph

So, after that very good start, my weight did nothing in any direction this week, and nor did my bodyfat percentage points. Humph. Well, OK, maintaining is better than gaining.

I am very good at maintaining, actually. My metabolism seems to be the kind that doesn't really care much what I do, because I neither gain nor lose weight very easily. Which probably means that I get away with nutritional negligence when I shouldn't.

Actually, last week was OK, food-wise, although Sunday included some chocolate which I rather regretted afterwards. But, I don't know... I don't think I was being as mindful as I need to be. No major dietary crimes, but I'd lost concentration a bit.

I've been trying not to eat bread, on two grounds: firstly, I don't seem to digest it very well (I get indigestion if I eat toast for breakfast). Secondly, in the absence of any actual snack foods in our house, I have a tendency to grab a slice out of the fridge mid-evening. Not that this is a nutritional crime, but I don't NEED it.

And I didn't entirely avoid doing that. I also made some muffins, but I don't regret that (and I didn't eat them all myself!).

The main thing about last week was that I didn't go running at all, although I have been lifting weights like a good little person. I went out on my bike a couple of times, and for walks, and I springcleaned the entire house (which feels like exercise, although I seriously doubt that it has any benefits). But evidently this wasn't enough. This would fit in with my previous experience: it doesn't matter how healthily I eat - if I want to lose, I need to do lots of proper sweaty cardio. As in running.

I need to work on scheduling that, though. It's too hot to run on the local cycle path during the day, but if I go near sunset, J has conniptions, because it's not very well-lit. (He came with me once, but he got nervous and was bitten by midges.) I wouldn't run there myself after dark had properly fallen. But it's so much better than running on the streets, which I really don't like. I can never get into a rhythm in between dodging pedestrians, wheelie bins, and having to stop to cross the road. And most of the streets round here are pretty steep. And I suspect J still won't like me running in the dark. Sigh.

However! New week, clean slate! I shall go and skip in the back garden, and then I shall do some work for my paleography assignment. And later perhaps I shall go for a run. Wish me luck.

Back in the saddle

I had a lovely time with my family in sunny Crieff. Here's the score:

Badminton - two sessions; got beaten by J a lot.
Tennis - one session*;beat Mum, got beaten by J.
Swimming - went every day; swam 1km on my best day.
Gym - went with L**; we ran for 10 minutes, stationary-biked for 20 (I think) and did some weights.
Dancing - one evening. Very energetic.
Climbed one hill (see pic).

So I'm feeling a bit better about fitness-type things. Witness that in the photo above, I am wearing my Great Winter Run t-shirt, which requires a bit of optimism and not feeling ridiculous.

Probably the thing I enjoyed most was the swimming, which must mean I have conquered my feelings of squidginess, especially as I was adding to my general unattractiveness in a swimsuit by voluntarily wearing a swimming cap. These were compulsory when I was at school, and I'd have thought then that it would require very large sums of money to get me ever to put one on again. They were ugly, they were uncomfortable, they didn't stay on, and they left corrugated welts in your forehead. Yuck.

But last time I went to Crieff, my hair got so chloriney I couldn't comb it. And I was assured (by various people in the know) that modern silicone caps are much better. Well... they are. Though still not exactly alluring.

J also likes to swim***, and we're investigating the possibility of making regular trips to a local pool. There was a time (when I lived five minutes from a pool) when I used to get up early to go swimming. I'm not sure I'm going to do that regularly, but there's no good reason why we should only swim at Crieff.

The other thing that happened while I was away: I found a scale (in the gym) and weighed myself. And if the scales were accurate, I am in fact only four pounds over my lowest recorded weight last summer. I must have a very forgiving metabolism or something.

I am pretty sure that I've swapped some muscle for fat, but nonetheless it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been imagining, and it gives me hope. I've been doing a fair bit of walking and trotting this week. Weights next week. (Decorating this weekend.)

Molly - thanks for the comment! Casting my mind back to 1986, I'm sure I never mastered proper Hula-hooping (though I spent a lot of time rotating it round my wrists and elbows). I do have a skipping rope which I use from time to time...

RG - It's Friday... it's not like it's a school night... (And I'm afraid most of my blogreading gets done around this time of night. I'm just not sleepy this early!)

And Mum, what are you doing asking if I regained my motivation? You were on holiday with me!

*It was rainy the other days. Tennis balls do slow down a bit when saturated.
** My sister, who also took the photo.
*** Although he did somehow manage to strike his chin on the bottom of the pool while doing so. As you can see in the photo.