Category: Juneathon

Juneathon Day 13

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gooseI’m currently writing an article about leaving your desk and getting outside so, as I’m not one to be a hypocrite (ha!), I thought I’d better leave my desk and get outside myself and not just the outside bit that covers the quarter of a mile between my house and the gym.

Sometimes, my Garmin gets a signal while I’m still in the house. That day was not today though. I got goosebumps waiting for it to get a satellite, so I thought sod ya then, I’m going without you and I set off Garminless but it soon caught me up and I did about 1.5 miles in the cold and the drizzle.

I’ll be cycling later when I go to see my university’s production of Witches of Eastwick.

Stats
Running: 1.5 miles
Cycling later: 6 miles
Goosebumps: lots

Scraping the barrel

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laundryYou know it’s Juneathon when your laundry increases and most of it appears to be gym wear. That and scraping the bottom of the kit drawer for something to wear. Which, in this morning’s case was a lime green Royal Parks Half t-shirt that’s now unflatteringly small and a pair of cheapy tights from Sports Direct that I won’t wear out in public as they’re so thin and, unlike Madonna when she’s poncing around in skin-tight leotards, I like to spare the public from any camel toe there may be.

So, keeping this sartorial dilemma in mind, today’s activity was body pump in the privacy of my own conservatory. (Actually, that’s what I had planned to do anyway, I just wanted to type ‘sartorial dilemma’. Even if there wasn’t actually a dilemma.)

Stats
Body pump: 45 minutes
Loads of laundry washed yesterday: 2
Percentage of it being gym kit: about 75
Unflatteringly small lime green Royal Parks Half t-shirts: 1
Pairs of thin cheapy tights from Sports Direct: 1

Something to motivate me

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bupa-great-south-run

Despite not particularly enjoying the Great South Run last year, I’ve signed up again. I’ll be careful who I allow to take off my chip at the end though and if I see that sour-faced old moo who stood on my blistered foot to get extra leverage to take off my chip last year, I’m going to stamp all over her feet and see how she likes it.

I had to give mine and iliketocount’s details to the man at Bupa who wanted to know, amongst other things, a) our estimated finishing times; and b) our t-shirt sizes. My t-shirt was bigger than iliketocount’s and my estimated finishing time was about an hour slower than his. Not embarrassing at all. Honest.

Still, hopefully (and I know I say this EVERY time I sign up for a race), it’ll give me the motivation to start running again. It motivated me enough to go to the gym after lunch, anyway, and I did 15 minutes on the treadmill. It’s a start.

Stats
Rowing machine: 20 minutes
Cross-trainer: 20 minutes
Treadmill: 15 minutes
GSRs signed up for: 1
T-shirts bigger than iliketocount’s: 1
Estimated racing times 1 hour slower than iliketocount’s: 1

No slacking for me

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I wanted to count walking across the road to the post box as today’s Juneathon, then @jendevaney2 offered me one of her workouts.

twitter-screenshot

So I said, thanks, I’ll take the swim. Then iliketocount came home and asked if I’d Juneathoned and I said I’d been to the post box and he muttered something about not taking it seriously and so I thought I should probably go for a walk and then I decided if I went for a walk I could have a Cornetto (or Tesco’s 4 for £1 version of them, anyway) when I got back.

So that’s what I did. (Except I haven’t had the Cornetto yet.)

Stats
Post boxes walked to: 1
Juneathon swims donated: 1
Walking: 1.15 miles
Tesco Cornettos: 1

Cows, calves and cats up trees

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Yesterday’s bike ride wore me out so much, I fell asleep last night before I could get drunk. So today’s hangover, on a scale of 0-10 of Sunday hangovers, was only about 2, so I went to the gym this morning.

greensand-way-sign

Then iliketocount and I went for a bike ride to explore the next bit of the Greensand Way that we hadn’t seen yet (well, I say ‘we’, I mean ‘me’, as he’d gone and explored it without me a few weeks ago).

greensand-way

I saw a cat up a tree

cat-up-tree

and a cow with a big spiky metal thing in its nose (anyone know what it’s for?)

cow-with-nosering

and a baby cow

baby-cow

and some cows roaming free on the footpath that I was too scared of to go anywhere near.

cows-on-path

And then we went to the pub for a pint and cycled back.

That’s enough greenery for one weekend, I’m going to go and look at a picture of Canary Wharf or something.

Stats
Rowing machine: 20 minutes
Cross-trainer: 20 minutes
Cycling: 6 miles
Walking: 1.5 miles
Cats in trees: 1
Cows with bit metal spiky things in its nose: 1
Baby cows: lots
Pints: 1

The crown and windmill

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No, it’s not the name of a pub.

Today, I:

got up at 6:30am and did 45 minutes of body pump;
cycled 10 miles into the wind to Wye;
stopped at the cafe to have roasted vegetable and mozzarella panini and chips, and hot chocolate;
walked up the Wye Crown; then

wye-crown

cycled back 10 miles, with the wind behind us and Willesborough Windmill in the distance.

willesborough-windmill

Now I am tired.

Yawn.

The one where I discover how unfit I really am

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My gym is only .25 miles away. I’ve run it a couple of times and it usually takes me about two minutes and thirty seconds. Today though, it took three minutes. That’s 30 seconds slower. That is appalling. I know I’m not a speedy runner, never have been, but surely I can run .25 of a mile in under three minutes?

I had planned to go on the treadmill but as today obviously wasn’t going to be a good running day, changed my mind and, after I’d been on the rowing machine and the cross-trainer, went on the mind-numbingly boring stationary bike, which was made un-mind-numbingly boring by pedalling along to Audiofuel’s Martin Yelling Interval Session. Yep, Audiofuel is so good it makes stationary cycling fun (even if it is designed for running).

Well, that’s the first week of Juneathon over – well done everyone for your achievements so far – how are you all getting on?

Stats
Running: .5 miles / 6.08 minutes
Rowing machine: 20 minutes
Cross-trainer: 20 minutes
Stationary bike: 20 minutes
Juneathons completed: 7/7 (sort of, with a bit of creativity on the first day) 

Home body pump

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The good thing about doing body pump at home is you can skip the bits you don’t like. In my case, that’s the lying down bits, the abs bits and the stretching bits (and, no, that’s not all of it, shut up).

The bad thing about doing body pump at home is you have the instructor on the screen doing the same cheesy facial expressions and using the same cheesy phrases each time you use it.

Still, home body pump is almost as good as doing it in a real live class and I must have put some effort in, as my arms, legs and abs are now aching.

body-pump-screenshot

I also accidentally went for a ten mile bike ride. After cycling the long way round to the farm shop (2.5 miles), as it was such a beautiful (albeit windy) day, I decided to carry on.

p.s. I’ve seen some slacking going on the last couple of days, so can I remind you all: SLACKING IS NOT AN OPTION.

Thank you.

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Yesterday the delivery man brought me some new shoes.

puma-faas-500-v2

They’re Puma Faas 500 v2 and the other pair of Puma I’ve got are bright pink, so I was pleased with these ones not being pink and making me look like I’m training for a Race for Life, but I’m now worried, what with the turquoise bit, people will mistake me for David Icke. Or maybe a Native American. But, most likely, people will just think ‘ooh, nice shoes’.

These shoes are comfy. One thing I like most about them is the wide toebox; a lot of shoes are too narrow for me and give me blisters even on the shortest of runs. I was impressed with these and as my current shoes are just about ready to be recycled, I reckon these will be taking their place.

Another thing that powered me through my run today was the Audiofuel Juneathon 2010 mix. It’s a fantastic 25 minute mix that Sean at Audiofuel made for the 2010 Juneathon participants and you can download it for free here.

Don’t you know who I am?

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blank-face

Well, that was embarrassing. The woman on the gym reception usually waves me through without me having to show my card but this morning, she gave me a blank look. Then, eventually, recognition: ‘Oh, Cathy, yes, hello, go through.’ Has it really been that long since I was in the gym?

After watching a couple of people walk slowly on the treadmills, I was tempted to have my usual moan on here but instead, I will just say a ‘you are hardcore’ to the 7ft 70 stone man who was running on one.

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