Yesterday I made great plans for Janathon Day 3. Up for a parkrun, then out for a bike ride. That would make up for a slack fist two days!
Then husband and I saw the weather forecast. Plans for early starts were quickly cancelled and a bottle of Prosecco opened instead.
To skip over the embarrassing non-events of the day I finally managed some calf strengthening exercises just before bedtime. Better luck tomorrow, eh?
Day Two of Janathon. Still no running, but at now I’m home again so it was time for another new activity.
Stairs.
Stairs are a real novelty in this house. We are in the midst of a loft conversion, so for the first time ever our bungalow has stairs. So, as a first ever exercise I ran up and down the stairs 10 times. It was surprising hard work. When we moved in 11 years ago a friend warned us we’d end up with “bungalow legs” and sadly I think he was right.
Anyway -Janathon Day Two – Done!
* Yes of course it counts for Janathon.
No review of 2014 from me – I think I’m just glad to have got that particular December over and done with.
So a new year, a new month, it can only mean one thing – JANATHON is back again! The month long annual festival of exercising and blogging every day is once again upon us. For more details have a look (and get signed up quickly) here.
For something completely different, my exercise today was 40 minutes of ice skating. Amazingly I didn’t fall over once, not even when my young nephew fell whilst holding my hand, right in front of me.
It felt likea good start to the month -roll on the rest of it!
Today’s effort was a beautiful walk in the sunshine, with my lovely husband. Doesn’t sound like much of an effort for a Juneathon activity? Well, after an evening celebrating my in-laws’ Golden Wedding Anniversary at a lovely hotel, we had to go and fetch our car from the hotel car park where it had spent the night. Perceived wisdom was to get a lift back over there then drive back, but the Juneathon way was to run or walk it.
So a 2 mile walk in 41 minutes* in the sunshine, along the Cornish Coastal path, hand in hand with my beloved was the way it was. Juneathon’s hard, but someone has to do it.
* I did wear my Garmin, and I did walk around the car park to make it up to 2 miles. These things also make it an official Juneathon activity.
Another busy day, more putting off Juneathon until later.”As soon as the train stops”. “When the builders have gone”. “I just need to nip to Sainsburys”. “After I’ve made pizzas”. And so on, and so on.
The day was coming to a close, it was ten to midnight and I was sat in the car with no prospect of arriving anywhere in the next ten minutes. It was time for my emergency secret weapon – the pelvic floor exercises. These are surprisingly difficult to do sitting in a car, but I did enough that I could call them my Juneathon activity for the day. The words ‘skin’ and ‘teeth’ spring to mind.
Busy day here, but not much Juneathoning went on. With the builders being here all week it seems ridiculous doing any sort of cleaning or housework when they’ll just walk through and mess things up again. I’d decided to leave everything and do it at the weekend and so at least stays clean for a day.
Today was that day. Hoovering and mopping (or hovering and moping as a friend refers to it), bathroom cleaning, grass cutting, bed changing, washing – all were done today. Hard work but even I didn’t think I could claim any of that for Juneathon.
As the temperature cooled down in the early evening I took some bean poles up to the allotment. I considering cycling up and counting that as my Juneathon activity, but I’m wobbly enough on a bike without adding 8 foot bean poles into the equation, so I drove. Once up there though, after discussion with one of my allotment neighbours we decided my onions and garlic needed watering. Now I have quite a lot of garlic and onions growing and only one small watering can. That makes for a lot of trips back and forth to the allotment tap, carrying a weighty watering can on half of these trips. So that’s going to be my Juneathon activity. I’m calling it ‘Walking and weigh training’. Hardcore!
So finally, at the two thirds point of Juneathon, I nearly gave up. It had been a long hot day and a run just hadn’t happened. It was nearly 11pm by the time I gave myself a kick up the backside and opened up the e-mail entitled “Welcome to the Thirty day Challenge”. I’d signed up to a free 30 day regime of stretches and exercises by Kinetic Revolution that promised to make me a better runner (who could resist!)
I started following the instructions and watching the videos showing how to do the exercises. We have very slow broadband here, and the time for the opening title sequence to load at the start of each new exercise (in a new video) was nearly enough to make me give up. The website promised 10 – 15 minutes a day, but I spent nearly 30 minutes by the time the videos had loaded. I also think the instruction for the very first stretch is wrong. It says to do three lots of twenty stretches, each held for 20 seconds, on each leg. 3 x 20 x 20 x 2 = 2,400 seconds which is 40 minutes. I presumed the ‘three reps’ bit was an error and ignored it.
So, it was quite dull, but I did it and at least it wasn’t a plank!
Shopping? I hear you cry. How on earth is she going to justify that as a Juneathon activity?
Apart from obvious activities such as running, or a long bike ride, or a yoga session I like to think Juneathon is a chance to exercise when you would usually take an easier option. So cycling up to the allotment rather than going in the car counts in my book. Also (here we get to the point) does dropping the car off at the garage, not having a courtesy car or a lift but walking into town to go shopping.
To make it a more official Juneathon activity I even wore my Garmin, and so can report I walked 3.43 miles. It was good to walk, as it means I spotted this flower bed, in the Railway Village in Swindon.
Tuesday night is cycling at Castle Combe circuit night. Me and the boy have been going since April, gradually building up our laps and mileage. I’ve enjoyed the traffic free smooth tarmac whilst getting used to my new bike, and he lost any nerves at getting back on his bike after coming off and breaking his arm last year.
Last night was slightly different. It was the annual Midsummer Bike Ride which is open to any cyclist, young and old. The aim of the evening is to beat last year’s total number laps, oh and to raise money for the Wiltshire Search and Rescue
For a change I cycled up to the circuit and was a little embarrassed to find it’s only about 3 1/2 miles (I always thought it was further than that). Husband changed down a few gears and cycled with me. Son was feeling tired so we left him at home which was a shame, but meant I could go a little faster than I usually do.
We signed in and set off for four laps of the track at what was an easy pace (for Mr B&T) or a good pace (for me).
Then because we could, we stopped for some mid-ride refuelling.
I did manage another 4 laps after that, then I set off for home and left Mr B&T clocking up some more miles. 21.92 Miles in total which is very annoying – wish I’d gone up the lane and back again to round it up!
Today I spent four and a half hours working on my abs. Shall we leave it at that???
Curses. You want proof. Okay, here it is:-
This is me and my very lovely lovely friend who emigrated to Canada 6 years ago. She is briefly back in the UK and we managed to meet up today for many cups of tea, some lunch, and basically four and a half hours of laughing.
If that doesn’t count as abs exercises for Juneathon then I’m giving up now.
