spoke to soon?

lovely ride today, and lovely swim. i'm tuckered out, which is to be expected, but my foot is so sore which i didn't expect at all! i did a fair amount of running in the water, could that be it? maybe i hit the bottom funny dropping in to the shallow end, and didn't notice with the water to "catch" me? in any case it felt almost like a strain when we got out of the pool, at one point i thought my toe was swelling (but it wasn't), now it just has that same burning in the middle of the sole of th ball, which i had forgotten about, but a flood of memories are coming back... think i'll try to keep it elevated tonight.

back on the bike

i have new brake pads and the oppressive humidity has lifted for the time being, so i'm happy to be back on the bike!

took a new route to the kiddo's karate school yesterday - my usual path up the hill is under construction, so i took a windy side street. it was steeper than i remembered! but if i'm going to be climbing a hill, better to do it where there is no traffic, lots of shade. next time i'll be ready.

tonight the plan is to ride the "big bike" (my bike + kiddo's half-wheeler) to the pool for some swim time. we went for about 10 minutes last week - before the pool was closed due to a thunderstorm - and it was lovely while it lasted. also got some swimming in at the cottage over the weekend.

my foot has really been bothering my of late, so i am very keen to get more low-impact exercise to get in better shape cardio-wise before i start running! (and yes i'm aware it's just another in a long line of excuses...)

It’s amazing

How keeping up with the blog and maintaining good diet/exercise habits go hand in hand. I don’t know which inspires which, but I certainly need to make more of an effort with both!

So this morning I did 20 sit-ups, remembered my supplements, replaced the brake pads on my bike, and rode to work. Whoo! Oh, and instead of grabbing a coffee when I got to the office, I filled my water bottle.

Had a healthy lunch yesterday (green salad, organic swiss cheese, cherries, carrots, and an orange) and will have a similar lunch today (except an apple instead of an orange). Should get more variety I suppose, but it’s a challenge grocery-wise.

Another challenge is this weather—hot & humid. It’s meant to be like this all week, then cool off a bit on the weekend. looking forward to that—I find I get short of breath quite a bit in this weather.

Next step will be buying some new sneakers. I don’t even know where to begin—what brands are good/bad? I’m concerned as much about the ethics of the company as performance—actually I’m not really concerned with “performance” at all so much as support. My foot has been sore a lot lately—due I think to walking more in inappropriate shoes, and then favouring it. I need a bit of a heel, not a lot, but I tend to feel like my foot is being bent upwards, if that makes any sense. I would assume that is related to the soft tissue damage? Who knows...

Baaah

Oh, what is with me. I keep falling off the wagon and struggling to get back on. Breathing is difficult lately, and I don’t know if it’s the summer weather or just that I haven’t been getting enough exercise.

I haven’t been biking, because I need new brake pads (actually bought some, but they are the wrong kind). I have one in my handbag today though, so hopefully will get it taken care of!

On the weekend I had a good search for my running shoes but failed to turn them up. Don’t know what I’ve done with them! Argh. it may however be time for new shoes... I’ve had mine forever, although I am so lazy about running, they don’t show much wear!

The good news, is that the garden is flourishing, and this year I had the good sense to plant fewer wait-forever-for-veg-that-won’t-ripen things (tomatoes, I’m looking at you) and more harvest-as-you-go things (lettuce, spinach, arugula) so I’ve started grabbing a few leaves for salads, and packed workweek’s worth of leaves & home-made vinaigrette this morning to keep me going all week (I hope).

And, summer also means lots of lovely fruit, so we are fully stocked with cherries and apples and watermelon and things. Yum. If nothing else, I will have all the vitamin c I need!

summer is almost here!

aside from anything else, that means a different route to work - instead of the kiddo taking a school bus in the morning and being minutes away from work & home in the afternoon, i'll be driving him uptown to preschool. it's about 10km (7 miles) uphill, and not easy to do on transit either (i would need to take 4 routes from home to preschool, then 3 more to get to work). yay, traffic.

but what i'm thinking is this: we have a spare bicycle, which isn't ideally sized for me, but which i could certainly leave uptown all summer. then, i could drive up the kid up to preschool (against traffic, not so bad), then bicycle either 1.5km to the nearest subway or 5.5km to one that will mean i don't have to transfer at all. leave the bike at the station, transit to and from work, thus avoiding driving in traffic, and getting some exercise besides.

there will be kinks to work out obviously, but i think it's doable! and with my big new basket, i'll be able to bring my knitting with me for the subway portion of the trip.

We did it!

Well, we didn't quite reach our goal of raising $2000 for the canadian hearing society, but we did raise almost $1400 and thoroughly wore ourselves out!

I took the TTC this morning because my legs are still sore. Must start that c25k program right away. I just did the math, and not counting the times we took the TTC and all the time spent doing challenges (some physical, some not), I ran about 3 3/4 miles on saturday, or about 6 km. That was spread over almost 3 hours, though. So I know it is possible for me to run 5 km, but I also know I am not ready to do it all in one go.

Part of the problem was not wearing proper sneakers... I didn't think we’d be doing that much running (seeing as my team erred on the side of middle-aged, with the exception of my 5-year-old son... not exactly a team designed for maximum efficiency), so I was wearing sandals. But then, our name was picked for expert help: we were joined by amazing race contestant Luke Adams! So that was some added inspiration to get running and going fast!

We didn’t win by any stretch, but had a great time, raised some money, and got a little bit fitter, or maybe a little more aware of the need to get fitter.

The CHS Quest site will still be accepting sponsorships for the next 2 weeks if you care to make a donation!

a childhood dream come true

as a child, i remember reading the sears catalogue religiously, especially the christmas wishbook, and one of the many things i wanted but did not get was a "furkati" - the sears cheap-o polyester version of a flokati rug. oddly, my parents didn't think white shag would be a good match for my childhood standards of cleanliness, not sure why. anyway.

i was at ikea on the weekend, and saw this:

well! who could resist at under $40?

now, what does that have to do with the general theme of this blog, which is supposed to be about regaining health and fitness after a few setbacks? another recurring theme is me making excuses for myself as to why i'm not doing more. example: i keep saying i'm going to start the couch to 5k plan, but then my headphones didn't fit my mobile. also it's so sticky these days i find it hard to breathe walking, let alone running. blah blah blah.

anyway one of the things i was going to do "if only" was to start doing some calisthenics at home. a friend of my husband's does 20 situps every morning, has done for years, and you know what? it doesn't exactly make you a triathlete or anything, but if you do 20 situps every single day of your life, you're going to have better core strength than if you didn't. "but i have no where to do situps." we have hardwood floors, which are hard.

so i got the rug, which is about the size of a yoga mat, and not only is it lovely-squishy-under-the-toes when i get out of bed in the morning, but today when i got up i did 20 situps.

and you know what? it wasn't even hard!