The end of the summer holidays are now in sight. I think it’s time I did a run.
When the summer holiday began I’d been flat out moving home and dealing with a bunch of stress. My diet and my fitness regime fell by the wayside, and I let myself go.
What I mean by that is I made a decision not to fret about losing weight or worrying about having to do too much exercise. I just wanted to relax and enjoy some quality time with my equally stressed out family!
So I’ve piled on a couple of kilos, but I feel a lot calmer these days. The black dog is way off in the distance, I don’t hear his bark and that is a good thing. I’ve worked with my son to help him through his 11+ revision, been to the park with him regularly to help him practice some football moves, eaten well and generally tried to stay cool. But now it’s time to put together a little fitness plan.
Running for me has always been a challenge. When I was running regularly ten years ago, I found it to be cathartic. I would plug in my MP3 player, start my stopwatch and just run. Most days I would run for 45 minutes and do a long run on a Sunday morning. Every week I would add a mile until I got up to my longest distance of 12 miles. Then I blew out a calf muscle and found the recovery took longer than I had hoped. Work for me at that time was also very stressful and Rhona was suffering quite badly from PND. It was easy for me to quit running at that time. I’d always promised myself that I’d start again sometime, I just never made the time and let life get in the way.
Fast forward to the now. Karta will be back at school soon enough and with our move has come the unexpected bonus of living exactly one mile from one of the best beaches in the UK.
Over the coming months I will be making a commitment to myself to walk with Karta to and from school past Botany Bay. It may only end up being on the way home with Karta, but for me I’ll make the effort to take that route whenever I can.
Once my walking fitness is back up to a decent level, I’ll start to add a 10 minute run into my daily schedule, building it up to something more substantial as the weeks roll by. I’ll also be trying to go swimming four days per week too. Let’s face it, as a house-husband I should be able to find some time for fitness. My social media addiction is diminishing by the day, so that saves me a bunch of time. The walking and running I can build into the school run, the swimming I can squeeze in of a morning at one of the local pools.
Once I’ve shed a few stones in weight I’ll start swimming in the sea.
So my aim is to move more and eat less. I’ll try to post updates when I can, especially as I want/need to improve my writing.
Anyhoo, until next time…… adieu.