Oh Boy, What Was I Thinking?

I’ve been steadily progressing on the Couch to 5K training plan, and finished Week 3 on Saturday.  You know, without stopping midway through the workout to gasp and wheeze and curse myself for a fool.  A fat fool who will never lose the 8 or so kilos I’d like to shed.  Well I’d be happy with 5kg lost, but I’d be ecstatic with 8.  No more than that, though; with my build (I inherited my mother’s broad shoulders and hips) I’d start looking anorexic.  And that’s not a good look, despite what the moronic fashion designers out there seem to think.

 

By the way, I just discovered this podcast which is really helpful at keeping track of the changes between walking and running, and the music is better than the garbage my gym plays, and means less staring at the treadmill display waiting for the counter to click over to whatever particular magic number I’m waiting for to change speed.

 

ANYWAY (I do waffle on once I get started), I figured I was ready to move onto Week 4.

 

Oooh boy.  That was a lot tougher.  I had to stop for a moment during the second 3 minute run to catch my breath and have a drink of water, and what was meant to be the second 5 minute run got broken up as follows: 1 min @ 8.5kph, 1 min @ 6kph, 1 min @ 9.5kph, 1 min @6.5kph, 1 min @ 9.5kph.

 

I’m debating with myself whether to go back to Week 3 and build up my strength a bit more, or continue on with the Week 4 workouts and work on getting through the runs without stopping or breaking it up with more walking.  Knowing me though, I won’t want to go backwards to the week 3 workouts.  Ah dilemmas.

 

As I am a sponge and constantly drinking water, the gradually increasing time spent running rather than walking presents another dilemma.  My walking/drinking breaks are getting shorter and further apart.  I tried training myself to drink on the run but felt like I was about to knock my front teeth out.  I really am going to have to learn how to absorb water from the atmosphere via osmosis.

 

I also did some weights yesterday for the first time in a loooong time.  I decided to drop the weights by one level from where I had been (so depending on the machine, the difference was anywhere from 2kg to 10kg) to get an idea of where I was up to.  I came out alright with that; my legs and arms today are a little tight, but not too sore.  So I’ve decided that next week, I’ll put the weight back up again, but with a smaller number of reps (2 sets of 10 instead of 15), and gradually work back up to 2 sets of 15 reps.

 

The journey continues!

Plodding Along in the New Year

So far this new year, I have been to the gym twice.  I’ve been working on the ‘Couch to 5K’ program, and last night I got hold of the podcast which can help keep track of when to jog and when to run rather than just staring at the counter on the treadmill (and would be even more useful if I wasn’t too self conscious to run out in the real world).  I’m in the third week of the program at the moment, which is a five minute warm up walk, followed by 2 repetitions of a 90 second jog, 90 second walk, a 3 minute jog and a 3 minute walk, then a cool down.  Well I slot in another 2 minute jog to take me to 25 minutes total before the cool down.  Then I do another 5 minutes of cross training.

 

My goal is to go 4 times a week like I was before I had my first of three bouts of the flu last year, but I already know I’m not going to make it this week given that I’m going to be out every night for the rest of this working week.  Ugh.  Oh well, I’ll be back in there on Saturday and three times a week is what’s recommended anyway.  Or if I were completely insane, I could get up mega early, go to the gym, come home, have a shower, and then go to work, but I can’t see myself doing that.

 

I’ve also been very well behaved in matters of food.  No chocolate!  And strangely, I’m not missing the chocolate so much as I thought I would.  When I see it sitting on a desk, I will confess that I look oh so longingly at it, and I’m sure I hear a little voice screaming “eat me, eat me!” but I’m reasonably sure I can put that down to general weirdness on my part.  Or the damn pixies have followed me to work again.  I’m very proud of the not eating chocolate, as my hormones would normally about this time be screaming for a little bit of chocolate.

 

For food, I have been following the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet.  Kind of.  Living at home, I don’t control what’s for dinner; the parents do.  But even just with following the breakfasts and lunches I’m feeling less hungry and less likely to need snacks.  If I do need snacks I have a stash of 30g packets of sultanas or mixed nuts which work wonders for killing off those cravings.

 

La Spaghetti is coming along nicely, although I haven’t had a chance to do any since the new year.  Here’s the side-by-side with the pattern for how it is now:

You can see the eye and nose taking shape now, well once you know what to look for.  I’m liking the way it’s looking so far.

Where have I been?

Gosh.  I finish uni and suddenly I seem to have even less time for blogging than before.  Oh didn’t I mention that?  I have finished university!  And there was much rejoicing.

 

I will graduate on April 1, 2009 with a Bachelor of Business (International Business).  Yes, April Fool’s Day.  I’m sure there will be much hilarity over that little date for a long time.  “Got a Bachelor in Funny Business, do you?” is what my dear old mum had to say about my graduation date.

 

So what does this mean I am qualified for?  Well, here’s the thing.  It qualifies you for everything and nothing all at the same time.  It sure sounds impressive – wow, International Business– but at the same time it’s a very generic degree, so its not really clear what job you can go into.  Say like a Bachelor in Accountancy is pretty clear; you go into an accounting job.  But International Business is pretty vague.  The main thrust of the degree has been about Economics, with a couple of Finance courses thrown in for fun.  I also did a few electives in International Studies, which has been something I’ve been interested in for a long time.  So if anybody is looking for someone with a degree in Economics with a fancy title, I’m over here!

 

The economics stuff was definitely interesting, although you wouldn’t think I found it so given that my grades for those courses were almost all lower than those I got for my electives.  However, this can be easily explained by the fact that most of my electives did not have exams, and the majors did.  Before exams, I would be sitting on grades equal to or even higher than my elective courses.  I take this as evidence that exams drag my grade down.

 

(On a side note, one of my friends who was studying education, and has also now finished, took a course where the main topic was all about how exams don’t help you learn.  There were studies and all sorts of fun stuff about it.  How was it assessed?  An exam.)

 

The finance stuff was not fun though, mainly because for both of the Finance courses we had a lecturer who was from India, and whose accent made understanding more than one word in three almost impossible.  The poor guy knew that people had trouble understanding him – heck it would have to have been obvious when people started walking out of lectures after only 10 minutes, and then not coming back at all through the semester, and he did try to slow down and make himself clearer.  Unfortunately he would get caught up in the moment and in the topic and before you knew it, we’d be right back at square one.

 

So… what else has been happening?  Ah, yes, my birthday.  Yup, that happened.  I ate and drank far too much, but over all it didn’t get me down as much as I was expecting it to.  We went out for dinner and drinks the night before at a Greek café/restaurant, and on my actual birthday we (well, ok, my dad) cooked up a lamb on the spit for family and family friends.  But I got up at the crack of dawn to help!  Surely that counts for something when I’d been out the night before!

 

We’ve (Mr Vexation and I) have also been trying to work out where we’re going and what we’re doing when it comes to his sister’s wedding next year.  Its on Hamilton Island and we don’t think it worthwhile to just go up one day, the wedding the next and come home the third day.  But then it comes down to do we go up earlier, do we stay later, it’s expensive to stay at Hamilton do we go back to the mainland, do we go on a little cruise type thing?  So many questions, and only a matter of months to get it all worked out and booked.

 

The gym adventure is continuing, although there’s almost an element of why am I bothering this close to Christmas?  I sometimes feel like I may as well wait until the New Year to get back into it properly, as there’s just food and drinks and gatherings and catch ups everywhere and every-when.

 

And I still haven’t gotten back into my cross-stitching.  I have two projects that I would love to start, but there’s a little problem in that I can’t seem to find the right fabric for either of them.  One project is of a tiger, the other a version of Da Vinci’s La Scapigliata (or La Spaghetti as I keep calling it because I can’t pronounce the real name).  The tiger project I want to put on black (61x56cm 28HPI evenweave or 14HPI aida), the Da Vinci on white or off-white (46x46cm 28HPI evenweave or 14HPI aida), but I can’t find any that’s big enough!  Pre-cut fabric seems to stop at 40x40cm, and I’m not patient enough to track down a customer service person to cut it for me, even in the event I have actually been able to find the right colour/fabric type/HPI (which I think has only happened once).  I’ve had a look around at some online stores but still can’t seem to find a way to order the larger one.  I also should probably stop trying the big generalised craft shops like Lincraft and Spotlight and try to track down smaller stores.  Trouble there is that I don’t really know where to look!  Gah!

 

So much going on, so little time.  If I fail to get back on here before Christmas, have a wonderful Christmas and New Year with your families.

Back to the Gym, Day 1

Well technically it’s actually day 4, given I first went back on Saturday.  But this blog didn’t exist then, and it wouldn’t make sense to have my first gym report of this blog starting on day 4.  So deal.

I got sick some time in August, which meant that I couldn’t go to the gym anymore.  Boo.  After 8 weeks or so of coughing my guts up, I’d fallen behind in uni work and so everything got pushed aside to get through it all.  And I noticed at my cousin’s wedding that I’d porked up a bit in that time (when your fat uncle tells you you’re overweight, you know there’s a problem lol).

And so I’ve gone back.  I decided to start running again.  Before the great Flu of 2008, I was halfway through a program to get me up to 30 minute runs without stopping, and I decided to start at the beginning again, but a little bit faster.  I walk for 5 minutes at 6.5kph (I love the treadmill because I’m incapable of running in the real world without going too fast, too soon), then for the next 20 minutes alternating between 60 seconds of 9kph and 90 seconds of 6.5kph.

I then did some weights, using the level I was at before the Flu.  Wow.  Either the weights got heavier when I wasn’t looking or I got unfitter.  I know, that’s not a word .

So the journey begins again.  We shall see where it leads.