Wow sorry guys, sometimes life just gets on top.
Let me bring you up to speed. Since losing weight I’ve been naturally feeling a bit healthier, but looks can be deceiving, some of my friends are slim and slender and can’t walk up the stairs without breaking a sweat. I want to be fit. Not in ‘damn girl’ kind of way (though compliments are always appreciated) but in a ‘damn I feel good’ sense.
I’ve been therefore working on building my fitness, cutting my body fat percentage and generally getting stronger and leaner. I’ve been spending a lot less time on cardio and more time in the weights section. It might look scary, it might be full of pumped up guys, maybe the mirrors freak you out a little but my gosh is it worth it. I’ve decided not to look at the scales for a while… so I can’t really tell give you an update on that. I’ve been concentrating on how I feel and how I look, rather than those little numbers followed by the kg/llb sign. If you want some ideas for workouts try these guys…
Emily Skye – https://www.emilyskye.com/ (her workouts can be found on her facebook/twitter/insta streams)
Clean Eating Alice – https://www.instagram.com/clean_eating_alice (super easy to follow workouts)
Rob & Ben @ TEG – https://traineatgain.com/ (look at the free stuff and then put together your own workout)
I signed up to the Great Birmingham Run back in January – as I needed a challenge. It came round really quickly… before the race (10k in total) – the furthest I’d ran was 6k. I’d been using an app on my phone from Zen Labs – Couch to 10k (http://www.zenlabsfitness.com/) but being the busy person I am, I’d been forgetting to track everything. Still it was a good marker.
Mostly I spent my time doing interval training – 1 min run 1 min walk, 90 seconds run, 1 min walk, 90 seconds run, 30 seconds walk etc. Some days I’d get carried away – I mostly blame Kano for that (I mean you can’t slow down when New Banger drops), and run further and harder, but never really beyond 5/6k.
Sunday just gone was race day, I was nervous, I felt a bit sick, could I do it? Could I run that far? What if I needed to stop? The first 5 minutes were the hardest by far, there’s a lot of people running at the same time, it’s tricky to pace yourself into your own race. However soon I was at 3k and it was going just fine. I managed 5k in 43 mins – fairly happy with that. 6k came and went, then oh my life, the hills, 2k of uphill running. The biggest incline I’d previously run at was 2.5% on the treadmill… I was unprepared, but I couldn’t stop now. Luckily I had a solid playlist, also huge thanks to the nice runners who patted me on the back and told me to keep going. The thing is with races/runs/events like this, part of your effort is adrenaline, the combined effort of the entire participant pack as a whole really does drive you further. Oh and when people have signs like ‘Pain now, Prosecco later’, yeah that helps.
I finished the race in 1hr 43 mins officially (I stopped at 4k for a toilet break – though I kept jogging on the spot in the queue out of fear my legs would seize up haha) so my iPod reckons I did it in 1hr 34mins. Is that good? It’s flipping fantastic for me. I’ve never run that far before in my life. I didn’t stop. I won my own race. So yes my personal best is pretty high in comparison to others, but I’m already looking forward to the next one, and shaving some time off.
Unfortunately my gym is shut for refurbishment today… guess I’ll have a little break till tomorrow, when the journey to fitness continues. Until next time…
Kerry – x
Slim & Tonic 