So the day has finally dawned and I have surprised myself by making it to the end of Janathon. My Janathonning son had posted on Facebook about his final piece of exercise by 7.45am while I was still sipping tea in bed. I didn't get into the gym till after 3pm.
Last night I slept well, but by 3pm a few stressy things had happened, not least a set-back regarding my outfit for my daughter's wedding in three months time. I say setback; I mean disaster. A dress-making disaster darling! The dressmaker has not been able to source any fabric in the colours I want, so it's back to the drawing board! Well, back to trawling shops for something suitable and I hate shopping.
Still, one thing I have learned this month is that my automatic reaction to such a First World catastrophe need not be tea, cake, a rant and a wallow on the sofa. So off to the gym I went and, get this, I couldn't wait to get on the treadmill. And once on it, I couldn't wait for five minutes warm-up walking to be up and notched the speed up to 8k after two minutes. It still seemed slow, but I decided to increase the length of time running rather than the speed. So I moved myself up to Week Five of the Couch Potato to 5k Programme which is four lots of 5 minutes running punctuated by 3 minutes walking. This meant I got 4k done in 35 minutes instead of 3.5k. I know I'm not going to be threatening anyone's place in the next Olympics, but, for someone who has not run for 30 years and could only manage 30 seconds at a time on 1st January, it is not bad. In fact I'm secretly very pleased.
One thing I tried, on account of being lazy, was slowing my pace. I didn't slow the treadmill, just the speed my short, fat, hairy legs were moving. Since I didn't fall off the treadmill, I must have lengthened my stride and I felt I was a little higher in the air.
And I spent more time watching the usual TV diet of food porn and property porn and less time watching the clock on the treadmill. Actually, I was rather distracted by the kumquat cheesecake that Nadia Sawalha was making. And so was that master of erotica, Alan Titchmarsh, who had to ask for an explanation when he heard the word 'kumquat'.
Oh and I did 30 reps on each of the weight machines for arms, lats etc...
Having blogged on Day 1 that I hated running, am I now addicted to it? I might just be.
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