23/28 A new direction...

Two things today that made me think of the title of this post. 

First of all we ran a new route tonight, it was a lovely evening to be out and I wanted to see how the legs felt after Saturday and then yesterday's workout.  I thought I'd probably go for a walk with a wee bit of jogging perhaps if I felt up to it, but my legs were surprisingly responsive so ran the whole way apart from road crossings and a minute when I had to tie my hair up as the wind was blowing so strong I couldn't see and was eating hair!

The second was that I passed a lady today whom I recognised from my brief trial at a slimming club last summer - said lady has lost about 5 stones in weight and all respect to her she's kept it off, she walks everywhere these days and looks healthy and well.  Seeing her today made me think about what I weighed last August and I realised that I now weigh 23lbs less than I did then.  This is no thanks to the slimming club, I did lose about 10lbs over the 6 weeks or so I went, but I put it all back on again between October and December.  This is why I was looking for a different approach to weightloss and fitness and how I came across a link to PinPoint Fitness via a friend from Strathclyde parkrun. 
So this was my second new direction :-)
I can honestly say my approach to food, to eating and to exercise has taken a new direction, I now do more exercise than just run, I have got stronger and more confident in my ability to keep going, having got lighter has also made it easier to get around a bit faster - there's less to shift!  Simple physics, the less mass you have to move the less effort you need to expend, or for the same effort I get a greater return - win win! :-)

I enjoyed my run this evening, it was only 5km but it was enough for the first run after a tough race, there's something gratifying about your legs responding when you ask them to :-)

Early start tomorrow as Dave is coming to visit us at fitcamp, I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to it or not, will let you know tomorrow!

We've eaten a lot of eggs today but hopefully they won't have any adverse effects!
Breakfast:  scrambled eggs and tomato
Lunch:  goats cheese, red pepper and tomato salad
Dinner:  salmon, asparagus and goats cheese omelette with a salad of spinach, chard and rocket
 

17/28 - Ladders 2

And what worries us most is that there might be a 3rd set of ladders to climb!
In week 1 we did a session entitled ladders where we repeated a number of  exercises once, twice, three times up to 9 times, it was hard enough!  Today we did ladders 2 - I honestly can't remember how many exercises we did today but the ladder was a tough one to climb!  We did LOTS of high knees, LOTS of split squats and a new bad boy called a switch lunge - it incorporates a jump to switch legs and it's hard!  There were a fair few plank to pressups and mountain climbers thrown in for good measure so I think it would be fair to say we were all pretty "done" by time we'd climbed this particular ladder... We were however all still smiling :-)

I had back to back meetings in Glasgow today which meant I didn't have time to drive back from Cumbernauld to Alloa and get organised in time to get the 7.30 train to Glasgow so after having a clean up and getting changed in the salubrious surroundings of the ladies loos in Tesco I drove the half mile to Croy station where I ate my boiled eggs and drank my water before getting the train into town.
I was in the city before 8 which is a bit earlier than I needed to be, but that meant I had time to enjoy a leisurely peppermint tea in Starbucks and watch the "early morning crowd" - the people who are around in the morning are much more interesting to watch than the ones you get later in the day, or even in the evening...
I walked down to the Scottish Government building on Argyle/James Watt Streets, it's a 15-20min walk and it was a freezing cold wind that was blowing around the city so I walked smartly and hopefully continued the fat burning process kicked off on the ladders. After spending the morning and then afternoon in 2 different meetings it was an even brisker walk back up to the station as by this time the rain had arrived!
Driving home to Alloa I realised it was 12 hours since I'd driven in the other direction, it had been a long day :-) The weather has turned really nasty and it was wild and windy driving back - I hope it's passed before Saturday!!
I baked a nutty loaf this evening while the dinner was in the oven, looking forward to that on the high carb day :-)
Today is a low carb day which means I can't have any fruit or yoghurt - and have to have protein at every meal so breakfast was 2 boiled eggs - not desperately exciting but it was easy to prepare last night and take with me...

Breakfast:  boiled eggs
Lunch:  mackerel and salad leaves
Dinner:  Broccoli and watercress soup followed by
chicken rubbed with garlic and smoked paprika with the rest of the dark green salad

I took water with me today and so have managed to get to my 3L target, have had a blackcurrant tea, peppermint tea and tulsi tea.

My quads are this evening officially dead - R.I.P :-)