I've got "the bug" and other surprises

For 10+ years now I have been a Mum.  And in all those years, by the time I have got the child/children in bed I have felt I deserved to sit on the lounge and enter a vegetative state in front of the television till bed time. Tonight, in response to realising that I consumed too many carbs this morning, I got the kids in bed and headed out the door with my dog for a walk/run, arriving home 40mins later hot and sweaty and heading straight for the shower.  This is seriously the turning of a corner.  My kids are still exhausting, but they are more independent than ever before and it is time to accept that I can change these post kids habits.  Hence: "I've got the bug."

Another discovery today, was that my charming PT is 20 years younger than me. I had suspected as much, but I really didn't have any interest in having my suspicions confirmed. How did it come out you ask?  A music video came on at the gym while I was on the bike doing a Tabata, and it was Big Audio Dynamite (I saw them live in the late 80's), apparently a band that Paul, was unfamiliar with, but I was certain that he would have heard of The Clash - nope.  He was born after Mick Jones was kicked out of The Clash in 1983. Punk is dead :-(



And in other new discoveries, I heard in my Philosophy group today, about a Christian mystic woman who was writing in the 13 and 1400's.  Julian of Norwich was ahead of her time.  She was very positive by traditional Christian standards and in hindsight quite the feminist and Universalist.  I am looking forward to learning more about her as we continue to study Devotion.

Frantic Friday

Yesterday was nuts - but what's new?

After drop off I had my 'Fitness Friday' session with Therese and 6 other Mum's from school and that Therese knows how to drive a person HARD.  Once we were good and warmed up (read:  pretty exhausted) We did a 20m Beep Test (Multi-stage Fitness Test) which is used to estimate a person's VO₂max (maximum oxygen uptake).  All I know is that it is a killer.  If you want to know more - check with PT Google.  Thankfully we were really just getting a baseline and at the end of the school term we will do another one and I will have improved out of sight! That is the plan anyway.  We finished the 1 hour session by doing Boxing Tabata - which I didn't find as hard as doing it on the Elliptical Trainer with Paul, but my left shoulder really knows about it.

I left the girls to head home and have 'meal' no. 2 of the day, on the way realising that I had arranged to play Par 3 Golf, with 5 of my other girlfriends - who I will refer to as the 'Camping Crew' girls (on account of us having plans to go camping with our families in March together)  Well, they will be camping and my family will be Glamping, which is close enough.

So off to Golf with just the 3 required clubs (putter, 9 iron and 5 iron), which I now know, could have been a putter, a Pitching Wedge and a 8 iron).  I lost two balls and only really revelled in one of my shots - although my putting wasn't too bad, given how rusty I am.  Fun was had by all, and when it got too hot we made a short cut across the course and headed to Lunch.


Lunch was one of those challenging diet experiences where what should have been a healthy salad arrived with too much dressing, too many olives and feta and not enough lean chicken - so consequently I didn't eat much of it and made my excuses and dashed to by daughter's swimming lesson where I have volunteered to help the the girls dressed afterwards.  Man did I smell 'NOT FRESH'.  While I had changed in between work out and golf - I did not have time to shower ...

The highlight of my Frantic Friday, was definitely heading out with yet a different GF (makes me sound popular doesn't it?  But that's just weird ...) to see Lincoln at the movies.  We had a lovely seared Yellow Fin Tuna dinner before hand - see photo - I did not eat the Salsa Verde and I had told them to hold the Chat Potatoes.  I arranged this a while ago when I realised that my Husband was going to be away and I hate sitting at home alone while he is out having fun.  Great film, fabulous Daniel Day-Lewis (will definitely get the Oscar over our Hugh :-() , wonderful script, great cast, fascinating time in history, AND really really long!  (photo of Theatre below) In bed at midnight - a super late night for me - hence doing my Friday blog post on a Saturday - sorry.

Working out the workouts

Most people - actually everyone who knew what I planned today, thought I was crazy.

After school drop off one of the other mum's hosts a training session at her place. Today was my first time, so I didn't know what to expect.  There were 7 of us at varying levels of fitness and fair to say I was making just about everyone else look good.  The trainer was serious and may have thought that the long list of body aches and pains etc that I came up with on my form, were a bunch of hoo ha.  We were running up short inclines, skipping and doing a circuit of semi-torturous exercise, but after the first 15mins of discomfort I actually started to warm up and by the end of the hour I felt really good.

After spoiling myself with a Soy Flat White from my local cafe where I was lucky enough to bump into two fab friends (hello Girls!), I headed down to my second work out appointment, and accidentally arrived half an hour early, so my PT suggested I do some cardio to fill in the time (yay, great idea- I was feeling fresh as a daisy! NOT).  Then for the next hour I was up for a weight training session followed by some more cardio.

The cardio included Tabata Training.  Check it out at www.tabatatraining.org  It is a very specific type of interval training which can be done on a variety of machines or activities.  My choice was the Cross-Trainer.  Briefly, it is a 4 minute workout where you go as hard as you can for 20seconds and then slow down for 10 seconds.  There are 8 intervals of the high intensity exercise.  On the Cross Trainer, every time I went hard, my torturer increased the incline on the machine.  After the 5th one he says can you say 'She sells sea shells by the sea shore' ? and I could - rather smoothly. Mistake.  He put it up really really high.  Lesson learnt!  Anyway, it is supposed to give your metabolism a kick that can last up to 24hours - so it will all be worth it when I can't walk on Sunday.

Oh, and I don't intend to do this kind of back to back work outs ever again!

And tomorrow I am declaring as a chicken breast free zone (see photo of the offending item poached with tomatoes). The mountain of protein I have to eat on this diet is killing me!  In addition after 3 days of making this MY time, my laundry workload is out of control, so tomorrow will also be LAUNDRY time!

And how did my little girl's first week of school go? Well to quote her: "School is definitely awesome !"