Goals and Gluttony

It’s been a couple of days since my last entry, so I’ll get you up to speed.

My weekly goals are going okay – so far I have swum 150 lengths (which was the goal I set for the week), have run 10.5km (so I have 12.5km left to run), have done an hour and 15minutes of yoga (so I have 3 hours 45 minutes left) and have done no strength training or planks, so I have 2 hours and 10 sets respectively.

I suppose that’s made a fairly big dent into the goals, but I only have three days, including today to finish it. I find these goals really motivating, so I might set them for myself every week. Next week I will know that I can manage more swimming, as 150 lengths was so easy to achieve. The goals also highlight what I’m missing out on in my training. I always say I want to gain strength, but I haven’t done any strength training yet – and I keep putting it off. My friend lives in a building with a gym, so I think I will pay that a visit this week. I will ask her nicely if I can abuse her facilities.

The reason I am a bit behind in some goals is that I have been naughty. I have had two nights of slobbing. Last night I went out for lots of drinks with my friend, and the night before I watched rubbish films and ate pizza with another friend, as we lay on the sofa. The thing I always use to justify nights like this is that I’m not on a diet or following a fitness ‘regime’. I am trying to follow a healthy way of life that I can continue for the rest of my life. It has to have room for midweek drinks and for lazy sofa nights or I just won’t stick to it. I don’t want to be an athlete, I just want to be fit and healthy, and it’s perfectly possible to do that with the occasional indulgence. Does this sound like I am trying to convince you or myself?!

I eat well 80 per cent of the time, so the other 20 per cent I can eat a pizza with minimal guilt. I’m a girl, so there will always be a little bit of guilt when I eat a cheesy deep pan pizza…

Other than the goals and gluttony, I have achieved another personal best in my lunchtime 3.5km run. Yesterday I nearly died, but I managed to complete it in 20 minutes and 7 seconds. I am so pleased – it’s much quicker than before. I was talking to a friend about it last night, and even though it is a rubbish time, he was very encouraging. I told him that when I first started trying to be sporty about nine months ago, that I had to walk a lot of the 3.5km and could only complete it in about 27 minutes. Well, I soon got that down, but it’s only in the past few weeks I have managed to get it to less than 23 minutes. He said I should do a 5km run and aim to do it in 25 minutes, because then you are well on the way to doing a 10km run in an hour – which would be amazing for me. I think I will do a 5km run tonight to see just how far off that I am. I imagine I will be ridiculously far off that – but we’ll see!

I’m going to do a run at lunch today too. I feel a little bit hungover from last night, so I’m going to take it easy. After yesterday’s run, I felt like I was going to be sick, but – as my friend from last night said – if you think you’re going to puke after exercise, but you don’t, then you know you’ve done your best. It’s probably not a great philosophy, though.