Tag: janathon 2014

Janathon Day 9 – silver tights are mine

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Not quite up at 5:30am as planned. Not even up at 6:30. Just about made it up by 7, although it was dark and I was warm but unless I slept through January, it was still Janathon and I wanted to go for a run before going to university, so that meant getting out of bed. Hang on, did I say ‘wanted to go for a run’? Blimey, Janathon is doing strange things to me, that’s three runs this week; I’m not sure I’ve run three times in the last three months.

Because I went out bang on school run mum time (despite it mostly being school run dads from what I could see this morning), my run was a bit stop/start for the first half a mile on the road where the primary school is, then it was stop/start for the next half a mile because of all the mud and puddles, then it was stop/start again as I collided with another school run going to another school. Still, three miles was done, just mostly at a walk.

Then, because the lifts at the station are being renovated, I had to carry my heavy mountain bike up the stairs and when I got to university, I ended up walking up and down three flights of stairs three times, then two flights of stairs twice and if I’d known that was going to happen, I’d have counted that for today’s Janathon exercise, especially as I asked on the Janathon Facebook page if I could carry some of it over to tomorrow and was told ‘no’.

Bah.

Still, my run this morning meant I got to wear my new silvery grey running tights.

grey-tights

 

grey-tights-2

I’ve got an assignment due tomorrow, can I count writing as exercise?

Janathon Day 7 – pink tights heaven

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Yesterday’s Janathon post should have been titled Day 6, not 5, but I’d already done the ‘five rhymes with alive’ thing and posted it on Facebook and Twitter and everything, so I decided to keep it. It was Day 6 though, I didn’t do Day 5 twice and slack off Day 6, honest.

As I mentioned the other day, the postie left a couple of pairs of running tights from Sportsshoes.com for me in the recycling bin (as you do). I said I’d model them for you when I wore them, so here’s the pair I wore for today’s run.

pink-tights

 

legs

Yes, I decided to do the whole pink thing and teamed them with a pink top and socks. (Did I really just type ‘teamed them’? Sorry, meant to say ‘I also bunged on a pink top and socks’.)

So, that’s my Janathon Week 1 done (that’s a normal ‘done’, not a Justin Lee Collins-esque type ‘done’), and here’s a screenshot of my SportTracks calendar to prove it.

sporttracks

Janathon totals so far:

Running: 6.49 miles
Cycling: 38.94 miles
Other (gym/body pump): 2 hours 20 minutes
Calories: 2,650

How’s your Janathon Week 1 gone?

Janathon Day 5 – I’m still alive

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There’s no actual reason to inform you I’m still alive, but it rhymed with five, so it seemed as good a title to give it as any.

I am still alive though, you’ll be pleased to hear, despite having achy legs – whether this was from yesterday’s 28 mile bike ride or the gym session the day before that or the run the day before that or just a Janathon accumulation of aches, I don’t know. But hey, aching muscles means I’ve been doing something, so yay.

It’s possibly not the best idea in the world to do body pump when you’ve got aching muscles but I was up early and didn’t want to wait for the gym to open at 9 before Janathoning as I needed to go to the Post Office and into town to the bank* and get back early enough to still have most of the day to spend doing my marketing assignment that I still haven’t done (tutor emailed me today and said she’d marked the first assignment and it was very impressive – didn’t tell me the flipping mark though, did she? Bah), so needed something I could do indoors (okay, I could have gone for a run but I don’t like to run on aching legs in case I make them worse, especially as I’ve only done one run in about the last two months).

So I did 30 minutes of my body pump DVD (yes, I skipped the floor bits and the stretching bits) and then found out how hard it is to put on mascara after doing body pump for the first time in ages. Oh, my aching biceps! Still, it didn’t look quite this bad (thanks to rundelrun for the pic).

mascara

Then I cycled into town and back and now my Janathon is over for the day. Back to university tomorrow, so this is where I might have to start getting creative with my exercise. Does exercising my brain muscles count?

*The bank has a snazzy new machine where you can deposit cheques and cash without needing to key in your PIN or use an envelope. You put your card in the machine, then the cheques and it scans the cheques and prints off the scans onto your receipt. So cool. Although not as cool as BigZigFitness’s bank – he can scan cheques on his phone into his account!

Janathon Day 5 – strangers, pub, cats and dogs

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I am too knackered to blog properly, so here’s my blog post in a list.

1. Saw tweet a couple of weeks ago about local bike ride, organised by Spokes.

2. Thought, I want to go on the bike ride and favourited the tweet to remind me.

3. Woke up and the weather wasn’t minging, so went off to meet a bunch of strangers.

4. Met the bunch of strangers who turned out to be a very nice bunch of people indeed.

5. Discovered I wasn’t the only one there who should have been at home writing a dissertation proposal instead of gallivanting around the countryside.

6. Cycled for about an hour until reached a pub in Smarden.

7. Spent a long time patting the dogs and stroking the cats in the pub.

8. Ordered cheese omelette and jacket wedges, then moaned my jacket wedges were chips, not wedges, and the chips were raw.

9. One of the group was perturbed her lunch didn’t come with the advertised bread.

10. One of the group said his jacket potato tasted old.

11. When we were asked how our food was, we all said ‘lovely, thanks’ in that good old British way even though we’d all just moaned about it.

12. Cycled for about another hour and went home and had two cups of hot chocolate to try and thaw out.

13. Went on Twitter and accidentally agreed to run Ashford parkrun with @TrevB1 in our onesies if he gets his workplace’s VLM place on Monday.

14. Spent four hours on Facebook trying to muster up the energy to blog. Remained unmustered.

15. Ate pie and mash and cabbage and gravy and wondered if I could be bothered to blog.

16. Realised I couldn’t be bothered to blog so wrote a list instead.

bike-capture

Janathon day 4 – a haiku and humiliation

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Here’s a stationary bike haiku for you:

Bike

Stationary bike
Why are you so crap? Station-
ary bike, you git.

Before I’d got on the stationary bike, I’d been happily cross-training on the cross-trainer when Mr Coach Driver Man decided to park his coach outside the window a foot or so from my face. Nope, 50 people staring through the window at me while I’m on the cross-trainer wasn’t embarrassing at all, oh no.

bus

In case I haven’t humiliated myself enough yet today, here’s a photo of me planking in my PJs to make up for the penguin onesie plank I did wrong.

pj-plank

Model (ahem) wears:

Grey and pink soft brushed cotton pyjamas by DKNY (cheap from TK Maxx)

Slippers by Tesco

Cabinet by Ebay

Vase by Homebase

Floor by don’t know, ask Shaun

Hair by Toni & Guy about 2 years ago and needs a bit of a trim

My deputy HelsBels has lined up a prize for the best plank (hopefully more prizes will be arranged so we can have prizes for different categories), so keep posting them on your blogs, Twitter and on Facebook. We want them all – in your pyjamas, in your onesies, or just blatant exhibitionism, it’s all good.

Janathon Day 3 – you voted, I obeyed

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You were determined to put the ‘jog’ bit back into ‘JogBlog’, weren’t you? Well, you won. The votes came in and the outcome was:

Run: 17

Bike: 4

Body pump: 1

Swim: 1

Gym: 0

So out I went this morning for a run. It was bright and sunny, the first mile was muddy and I saw a girl walking a dog so small, she could have saved herself a trip outside and put it on a hamster wheel instead.

voted-run

One good thing about being FORCED out for a run was I got to wear my new running tights, yay.

tights

Yes, that’s a little black cat curled up on the bed and yes, I know the mirror needs cleaning. Oh, and yes, I did change out of my slippers into something more appropriate in which to run.

Before I left the house, a Tabata DVD came in the post. I have no idea what Tabata is – I think it’s a high intensity interval circuit training type thing? Oh well, I’ll find out soon enough, something new for me to try during Janathon.

I also found out my postie’s New Year’s Resolution seems to be to give up ringing doorbells. Our one, anyway, as he left a parcel for me in the recycling bin. Not the shallow one with nothing in it, but the four foot deep one with a lot of crap in it. Nice. Most people give up drinking or smoking for New Year, giving up ringing a doorbell is a new one on me.

Anyway, in my parcel was a couple of pairs of running tights from Sportsshoes.com, I’ll model them for you when I wear them.

Speaking of sports attire, something slightly less conventional to exercise in is a onesie or pyjamas. Remember HelsBels set a Janathon challenge for everyone to do a plank in their pyjamas or onesies and post photos? Well, I’ve done mine dressed as a penguin. Fairweatherrunner said I had to do it again though and properly this time, on my forearms, not hands, as apparently that’s ‘too easy’. Bah.

penguin-plank

More photos of Janathoners’ PJ planking have popped up on the Janathon Facebook Page and Not Much Of A Runner was brave and posted a photo of his plank in the buff. We want more though, so keep them coming!

Janathon 2014 Day 2 – unfit for purpose

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Slightly misleading title; my main purpose in life at the mo is to finish the final year of my degree and as students are known for being idle layabouts, I’m allowed to be as unfit as I jolly well like.

Still, after I looked at SportTracks yesterday and saw I’d only exercised on ONE day in December (Tuesday the 17th, when I did 40 minutes at the gym, if you really want to know), I thought it was probably time I got back down the gym. I don’t usually sweat much at the gym (unless I’m on the treadmill) and thought that was down to me not putting much effort in but today I was a right old Sweaty Betty after just a few minutes on the cross-trainer at minimal effort, so I’m putting that down to unfitness.

do-next-graphic

Anyway, tomorrow, I’m going to let YOU decide what I do. You can choose from:

Run (minimum 3 miles but I haven’t run for weeks so it’ll probably be more of a walk but I promise to get out there even if it’s raining)

Bike (minimum 10 miles but if it’s raining I’ll do it in the gym instead and believe me, I really don’t want to do 10 miles on a stationary bike)

Body Pump DVD at home (I promise to do the full hour and not skip the bits I don’t like; I’ll even do the stretching bit at the end)

Gym (30 minutes rowing machine, 30 minutes cross-trainer)

Okay, over to you! Let me know what you want me to do and I’ll see which has the most votes in the morning.

Janathon 2014–Day 1 with the lurgy

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Well, I wasn’t going to do a dressing gown dash in that weather, was I? In fact, because I’ve still got a cold, despite having the feeling a walk in the fresh air would do me the world of good, I had no intentions of leaving the house today. Especially when I remembered there’s a rowing machine in the conservatory. Janathon Day 1 = sorted.

I’m not sure my pulse monitor and app were being particularly accurate today; it reckoned my heart rate went up to 235bpm with an average of 172bpm and I burnt off 188 calories in 10 minutes. I’d spend all day on the thing if it really did burn that many calories in 10 minutes.

mytrek 009

HelsBels has set a Janathon challenge of planking in your pyjamas and posting photographic evidence. Running From The Zombies has already done this and posted it on Twitter and I’ll do it if I remember later but, in the meantime, get your pyjamas on, get planking and photographic proofing!

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