Maybe I should say happy birthday in these posts… but that seems so traditional!

Anyway, can you believe I have been at this blogging malarky for 8 years!?! I can’t! I think I thought I’d lose the impetus at some point, but here I am still going, albeit not quite as regularly as I did in the first few years…

As if to prove that point, this post is, yet again, late 🤣

How long do blogs usually last anyway? I am pretty used to it now, and I use it a little bit like an external memory these days, like a diary, or log, a web-log if you will…

Ok.. yes I know I am rambling a little, but tbh if you aren’t used to that by now you probably wouldn’t still be here. Mind you, you could be new. If you are a new reader and you are wondering why I don’t just get to the point, you will come to realise that I do have a tendency to witter on a little bit. I do get to the point eventually though…I promise!

So…onwards to the point!

So tradition would dictate that I do a bit of a retrospective here and set some goals for the coming 365days. I am going to do that but my goals will probably not be full year ones, more sort of aims than hard and fast goals tbh.

So, year 8, the end of 2020, and the beginning of 2021. In the grand scheme of things over the whole world, these have been two of the strangest years in living memory. So blog year 8 has been no different. I have had to deal with lockdowns, and working from home for the first time ever and everything being closed as well as new rules about numbers of people allowed to meet up and a brand new culture of masks being worn in all indoor public places.

Those things are hard to deal with, they made us change our entire working patterns, made us cancel holidays and do things in a very different way to what had become normal before that. On top of those things I changed jobs, which was definitely a good move but meant I had to go through months of looking for a new job not to mention months of awful endings in my old job.

Don’t get me wrong, this year has not been all bad, spending time at home in my house with my husband and cats is definitely not a bad thing, and my new job is turning out to be a very good move, so despite it being weird year it has not been horrendous.

There have been setbacks on the training front however, horrible job/jobseeking stress on top of pandemic fatigue really takes it out of you in ways I hadn’t realised until I was dragging my way through it. But despite all that I have never lost the desire to move as much as I could. Admittedly sometimes that was not much, but for me at least, something is (nearly) always better than nothing.

So that was the recap…now for the next phase…

I have been talking recently about my plan to get back to training the way I was (see plan plan and plan) and it is progressing reasonably well…
I have been going to group PT sessions as much as I can (work schedule allowing) I have been carrying on with PT, I have been engaging in (normally Shaun T related) cardio sessions when I am working from home, or at the least going for a walk and I am walking to and from the station (about 1km each way) when I am working from work, so movement is up.

What I haven’t managed to do is get back to the shed gym in a serious way, or add regular endurance-y cardio in to this deal.

So, what I am going to pledge to do in my ninth year of blogging, is this:

• Build back up the heavy lifting, and get stronger than ever!

• Find some way of re-incorporating running into the mix

Yes, believe it or not I do want to get better at running again. I am not going to do anything silly like sign up for a race, but I do miss that time when I could run (well interval) reasonable distances!

So, I guess the plan is… Stronger, fitter and all round better at moving around stuff.

Not a big departure from my normal goals really, the biggest challenge is finding a way to do this while commuting. It is going to take a bit of organisation and some bravery!

Yep, bravery!
I intend to run as part of my commute. I have a 1km walk from the train station to my work, which isn’t really much of a run…but if I venture a little further afield I can run from the station to work via a more circuitous route that takes in the Regents Canal towpath (yay) and gets me about 3km of moving. All I have to do is get on an earlier train (which I can do without really getting up earlier), shower at work, and be brave enough to run through the streets of London carrying my work stuff in a backpack…

The lifting I probably can’t combine with my commute…or my work day really, or not when I go to the office anyway. I need to plan my days properly, and really take advantage of my WFH days and weekends.

It almost sounds like I have a plan doesn’t it!

All I have to do now is carry it out!