spartan terrified

So I have been part of a fitness group for the last six months.  We do boxing and running and push-upping and lunging and squatting and crunching and planking.  I am not very good at it.  My report card would say 'Trys hard, with minimal progress.  Significant difficulties with running, may need specialised support'.

The fitness group has enrolled in the Spartan Race.  I got caught up in the impulsiveness of it and the peer pressure and entered.

Now I am terrified.

I have been googling and youtubing.  I have realised this race is for Actual Fit People who like to go through very crazy obstacles.  Not middle aged women who break into a jog when the threat of missing a plane happens.

What I think I may look like in my mind

What will probably actually happen.

I don't even know quite how to train for this thing.  Maybe I will wander around work vaulting over fences and tuck rolling into classrooms.  Practise on the monkey bars in the playground.

I figure the worst that can happen is that I sink slowly into a mud pool and have to be rescued by young fit things with official shirts on.

Or I walk away from it in the middle and say 'I'm done.  Finished.  Off to have a Breaka Choccy Milk.'  I think my pride can probably handle that.

Spartan Terrified......stay tuned

just keep swimming

For much of 2015 my view was a watery black line as I trundled up and down a pool.

Mostly this pool.

And sometimes the 25m pool at school where I joined the intermediate squad and swam with the 12 year olds.  By the end of the season they had accepted me into their pool posse and we had squad jokes.  Trendy young things in hipster bars talk about their 'squad' - I had a proper swimming squad with flicking of caps and perishing goggles and groans about butterfly laps.

Swimming was my exercise of choice in 2015.  I find it such a rhythmic calming activity, no screens to look at, time inside my head (which can be a dangerous place), time to pray.  I swam in lots of 200m.  Kicking down the kilometres.

Sometimes at the pool there were elite swimmers churning up and down - so fast and sleek.  Like skinned seals.  That should be the name of their squad - Skinned Seals.  Maybe not....

Swimming has got me massive trapezoid and deltoid shoulder muscles, a back swimming tan, very chlorine damaged hair and much lighter body mass.  Thanks swimming.

Swimming has helped my mental health and calmness in 2015 - I get agitated without pool time now.  Thanks swimming.

I plan to continue.  Until I can swim out of my current swimmers into a smaller pair.  And then swim some more.

almost two laps of butterfly

I have taken up swimming squad again.  After a short break of 30 years, I decided to hit the local school pool and do squad with the grade 6 kids at 6.30 in the morning.  This morning was even raining as I trained.  I felt completely HARD CORE.

It has not taken that long for my body to get used to swimming again.  I also swim much further with the subtle peer pressure of the kids and the coach.  So I am averaging about two kilometres each training session - MUCH further than I would swim on my own.

I set myself the goal of swimming two laps of butterfly (in the 25m school pool).  I look kind of like a drowning person flailing about - but this morning I nearly made it.  With flippers on.

Not like this

More like this

But I am nearly there.  I am so competitive and determined like that.  If there is a ten year old to beat in a lap of butterfly, I say BRING IT.

There are four more weeks of squad for the season. I hope I can reach my goal.  Then I will have to find a winter sport...

buying new swimmers is the WORST

With the change of season here it is time to get new swimmers.  Over winter children have grown taller and having a wedgie with  your swimmers is not acceptable at school swimming.  For some reason the elastic in rashies is designed to last about three months, so they collapse halfway through the summer season and the girls emerge from the surf wearing a sort of elastic dress.

So off we went to the shops for hopefully an easy purchase of new togs for school.  HA!

Maybe I am the only mother in Brisbane who doesn't want her 10 and 12 year old wearing push up bra bikinis.  I am pretty sure my ten year old does not need padding on top.  It was very difficult to find just a one piece normal shaped swimmer.  And with a rashie to match - because their white white pale skin BURNS so easily.  We finally settled on Speedos (thank you speedos for not changing your design.  Ever.), even though they were pushing the budget they were not pushing top padding.

I also needed new swimmers.  When the elastic disintegrates around your arms and you are swimming freestyle laps...it gets a little bit TOO freestyle.  I grabbed a pair of speedos without even trying them on in the shop (because really, I would rather eat a ball of hair than happily try on several pairs of swimmers in the shops) - fortunately they mostly fit except for the back fat.  This I plan to get rid of with my lap swimming.

I broke in my new swimmers by doing a quick km in the pool.  All good.

And hopefully the agony of buying new swimmers is over for another year.

This is exactly how I look in my new swimmers.  Focused.  Fit. In my head.

the Egyptian

So I have been going to this training group at the gym now for about 10 months.  I try to go three mornings a week at 6.30 am.  Benefits = better mental health, no sickness for the last year, strength and toning.  Non-benefits = minimal weight loss.  Benefit and non-benefit combined = the Egyptian trainer.

The trainer our little group has had since last Christmas has been a guy who I think learned how to get people fit for the army.  He is very tough in a menacingly friendly way.  And he does not beat around the bush.  I whinge and carry on about doing planks and squats.  He tells me it is to get rid of my fat.  I ask him did he cry when his last slave collapsed.  He makes me do jumps onto a step and squat walks holding a medicine ball.  I moan about doing 100 sit ups with weights.  He tells me he will buy a special pair of scissors to cut off my love handles.

There is a special relationship between a trainer and his training group.  We come and exercise and whinge and sweat.  He dreams up new ways to make our muscles ache.

But I have achieved my goal of fitting into my ski pants in 8 weeks.  Quiet yay.  I can also now hold a plank for 3 consecutive 30 second lots. Very quiet yay.

I am worried when I com back from the trip that my group will be extremely fit and I will have to work extra hard to catch up.  And I am pretty sure the Egyptian will be all over my case to make it happen.
 

This is exactly what I look like doing a plank.  Exactly.  Not sweaty and puffy and shaky......

little wins

So I have been going to the gym for a group training session three times a week for about 8 weeks now - 6.30 AM (still not sure that is a real time) Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  My fitness and strength has been slowly improving, for example the first time the trainer said 'let's run' I said 'I hope there is a plane to catch cause that's the only time I am running', to now he says 'let's run' and I can do two whole minutes running at a reasonable treadmill speed.  I can also now do push ups without my arms shaking like jelly being poked - and yesterday I even tried a push up on my toes not my knees.

A person from google images demonstrating the awesomeness of Catriona's push up yesterday.  It was exactly like this.

 Bam.  Little win.

At work I have been encouraging communication with all the kids using PODD books as a strategy with some of them.  These books are full of pragmatically organised symbols and have lots and lots of vocabulary eg a page of pictures for family, for animals, for feelings - so you'll be playing with blocks using the blocks vocabulary and then be able to say my brother had a birthday and my foot hurts.  You know, random stuff kids say, except the kids I work with can't say it out loud, they have to use other ways to get their messages across.  These books are a little bit labour intensive to make, and I would like ten at my school for kids to use from, um, yesterday.  So I asked if there was any time available for a teacher aide to help me with construction of the books.  As it turns out, a rat had eaten through the heating wires to the pool and so the kids couldn't go swimming, so there were two spare teacher aides for a WHOLE DAY yesterday to help me make communication books.  It is worth being cheeky sometimes and asking.

This is a kind of PODD book.  It is amazing watching kids communicate.  It blows my mind.

Bam. Little win.

I have just realised that after months/years of having children that find it difficult to go to bed that for  the last month they have been putting themselves to bed, not coming out, reading a book and going to sleep.  It is amazing.  Especially because I pretty much stop parenting after 8.30 pm.

Catriona's children realised it was really not worth the trouble coming out of bed past 8.30 pm, as their mother really DID turn into an ogre.

Bam.  Little win.

amazing weight loss secret revealed

So two weeks ago I went to buy a new pair of jeans for winter.  I wandered into the shop and said to the assistant - Jeans Now Please.  She looked me over and said - you'll be a size 16 skinny fit.  I must admit I laughed in her face and maybe sprayed her a little with leftover lunch.  I have not been a size 16 for a long time.  But I tried them on.  She was the 'Jeans Consultant' as her badge proclaimed.

They fit.

And I realised that bits of me have been sneaking off and disappearing.  I have not even missed them.

And herein I have discovered the amazing secret of weight loss. 

Are you ready?


It will change your life.





















Eat less.

Move more.

Don't worry about it.







That's it.

Sure there are no quick solutions.  But it happens slowly and gradually.  We have been talking about what are the driving forces in your life at church, the 'idols', the things we daydream about.  I used to think about how good it would be if I was just 10 kilos lighter.  But my heart has been changing as I focus more on what really matters.  And then without thinking about it very much (apart from when I am exercising and watching the clock) the weight goes.


And all of a sudden you are wearing three sizes smaller jeans.

thanks for noticing but....

A conversation I had the other day:

Not Me:  You look like you have lost some weight
Me: Why thank you (inwardly preening and gloating, and thinking how good it was I have been on the 'no snacks' regime again since the beginning of the year)
Not Me:  Around your jawline
Me:  My what?
Not Me: Yeah - around your face - you look thinner.

Around my jaw!!  I do not want to lose weight around my jaw!  I want to lose it around my tuckshop arms, or my tummy, or my butt, or even my calves so I can get high boots.  Not my jaw.  My jaw is quite chiselled enough.

Sigh.

Maybe it is starting from the top down.  The next area to look thinner will be my neck.  Then I will be like a big round apple with a tiny stalk on the top.  Or like a modelling balloon that has a bit left at the end to make the poodle's tail.

Makes me want to eat a bag of chips covered in chocolate.

lactic acid love

pre run smiles

It is two days post 5km run.  And there is not too much build up of lactic acid in my muscles. I distinctly remember a physiology exam in second year uni when the 30% question was 'what is lactic acid?' with an expected essay style question of two pages.  I wrote 'it is in muscles'.  That's it.  Four words.  And that is still about all I know about lactic acid.

I know I have some in my muscles now.

The Gold Coast marathon fun run was pretty good.  I even ran about a third of it - a huge improvement on my triathlon running leg effort last year.  Maybe my training is paying off.  The atmosphere was great.  It was an early start for our family and we paid for it later with tired girls.  But I have now competed in an international event.  With 25000 other people.

The guy who won the marathon did it in 2 hours 10 minutes.  That is ridiculously fast.  That is running at 20km an hour for 2 hours.  That is faster than some traffic.

I don't think I can ever think I would run that fast.  Unless it was running away from a monster.  Or running for a plane.

and we start!

I am running.  Catherine is laughing at me.
Is it because I was only running for the camera?

crazy person in the fun run

200 m to go and we are still smiling

Striding into the finish!

we are fun runners.  we have medals.

cheering Sam on - doing the full  42km marathon.
My sign was fairly generic -
it gave many runners encouragement - GO MAN!

Sam at the 32km mark - keep going!  (he made it)

the horrible feeling I have overcommitted...again

Well, it is the eve of the marathon.  The Gold Coast marathon.  And while I have only committed to running an eighth of the course - it is still looming up tomorrow morning inevitably.

My training regime has been....well....not as intensive as I had planned when I paid my entry fee for the 5km fun ruin run in March.  By this point I was planning to be able to run most of the course.  I can probably run the first part as I am pushed on by the sheer force of mass numbers expected at the event, and I will run into the finish line.

Although sometime in the last month I cracked the three digit barrier.  That's 9 kilos down since January.  Who knew exercising more and eating less cake and chips would do that do a girl.  I need to get a belt for my jeans before the plumbers crack from loose fitting pants becomes way too offensive.

Tonight during my final tapering period before the big race I have prepared by eating meat nachos for dinner and having a beer.

And I am under strict instructions not to break my puppetting arm during the race as there is kid's holiday program all next week at church.  The show must go on.

Off to bed.  5.30am start.

Gulp.

dancing

I have become a fan of my dancing class at the gym.  I do not look like this.

 I look more like a late thirties woman trying to keep up with the moves.

But tonight I got it!  My fitness level must be increasing, cause I kept up with the class for the whole hour.  And what a class - we covered charleston dancing, 90s boy band dancing, house dancing, 80s video dancing (think Flash dance), jazz moves, and some ballet move that my muscle motor memory went 'I know how to do this!' - my lines were great.

The instructor is a little bit crazy, and there is a group of the cool girls at the front of the class with blonde ponytails and crop tops, and there is a fifty year old guy there in lycra sweat pants and a hoodie - but tonight we felt like a troupe.  I love the drama and the silliness of it.

But as a dancer, I am a great tea drinker.

running

I heard a great description on Miranda the other night (by the way funniest show ever) where she said that as an adult you should only run if you are near a train station and look at your watch.  Having agreed with this for nearly all of my life - I have started mild running training in preparation for this.  Well, the 5 km part.

This afternoon I did gruelling laps of the park working up to a slow jog.  I would say to myself  'just to the next tree' 'just to the dead toad' 'just out of slight earshot of the girls as they are having a big fight on the flying fox'  (they were still within eyesight).

I am slightly improving.

The friends I am doing the 5 km run with think we should have a safety word so we can slow down to a walk.  And no-one will be judged on the use of the walk safety word.  Which will probably be 'puff puff puff stop I'm dying let's walk' - that is a good safety phrase I think.

Maybe as the kilos get left behind as I jog along the path it will get easier.  I always like to imagine little molecules of me flying off as I run them away.

Running is not my natural default position.  I think my natural default position is sitting having a cup of tea and a chat and a giggle.  I could definitely do 5 km of that if it was measurable.

cracking the 3 digit...

I have been working on a plan for nearly three months now.  It is a good plan but not that well thought out.  It is the plan to be ECONOMY SEAT SIZED by the time we go to China in September.

My plan involves:
- no snacks.  sigh.   I love chips and chocolate and cheese.  But that probably was part of the problem.
- exercising and committing to things like triathlons and 5km runs in the Gold Coast marathon.

I started his plan on the 1st of January.  And has mostly been going well.  But I cannot crack the 3 digit weight barrier.  I figure it took ten years to put on - it will not come off in three months. 

I am trying.  My husband has also joined me on the no snacks plan.  It has been much easier having a buddy to do it with.  And Gab has been my personal training running partner ('Come on Mummy!').

And hopefully by September I will comfortably fit into an economy seat on the plane.

Before.....

Waiting for after....

as a triathlete...

Three weekends ago I went in a triathlon.

I had wanted to do one for about a year, and to my husband's great credit he did not laugh out loud when I said that it was one of my goals.

I was talking with one of my friends at my 20 year school reunion (!!!!) in April and she said we wanted to do a triathlon as well.  So....the word was out. I was semi committed.

Then I googled 'triathlon' and found this one.  We paid up, we chose a team name ('have a crack at it'), and we were fully committed.  To the medium course.  200m swim, 6km bike ride, 2km run.

I did some mild training with swimming and cycling.  Well, I had to get a bike out of the shed and dust off the cobwebs - I don't even own a bike.  I figured with the running part I could just walk.  I am sure I had walked two kilometres around Carindale before.

We arrived at Runaway Bay with the 600 other ladies in the event.  It was like a big fete. For sporty people who liked pink.  Who punched the air and knew what to do with their bikes.

 A lady wrote my number on my arm and leg.  I instantly felt athletic and ready to go.

Although by the time I got to the pool I had lost my timing chip and forgot to put on suncream.  Before I knew it I was in the water DOING A TRIATHLON!

My swimming leg was great - I overtook heaps of people, and only hit one lady in the head accidentally, and I burst out of the water feeling strong and ready to ride.
Then it took me ages to put on my shoes
and I had lost my hat and water bottle and had to borrow my friends.
I really need to work on my transitions.
That's what us triathletes call the bit where you get changed ready to do the next bit.

The riding was fine
except for the bit where the chain came off my bike
Luckily I just flicked it back on and kept riding.
Then came the running.
My worst leg.
I think I ran the 200m out of the stadium
then walked around the carpark a bit
then ran the 200m back into the stadium to the finish line.

But I had done it!
In a personal (and only) best of 49 minutes.
I felt really proud of myself and my friend.
We are goal achievers!
We are girls who are committed!
We are TRIATHLETES!

And now I feel I can start conversations with
'as a triathlete....'

I am going to do it again.  Improve my running leg and my time.

Who's in?

swimming

I am about to go swimming with my girls.  We go every Sunday afternoon in a fitness quest for me and a skill improvement quest for them.

I swim laps.

They muck around in the shallow end pretending to do laps and practising handstands and fighting over the one pair of flippers and doing secret underwater messages and asking when are we getting out and hanging off the lane ropes and asking to go to the toilet (I mostly take them...sometimes it is too late... that's why there is chlorine) and I beg them to practise their swimming cause they will want the skills when they are older and they whinge a bit and under extreme duress do two laps then hang off my back while I am trying to finish my set of freestyle laps.

Then we have a spa.  Then some grooming in the change room.

Then when we get home we are all worn out and ready for bed.  Theoretically.

What are we gaining from swimming?  I am getting massive deltoid (shoulder) muscles.  The girls are honing their negotiation skills.

Ok....off we go.  Spot the slightly harassed woman with two shrieking girls in a gym near you... and swim on the other side of the pool.