My Journey With Health And Fitness – Building Back Up

The family decided to go out for lunch today. My husband suggested that he walk with me as that is what I had planned to do. I knew it was a 1/2 hour walk but he insisted on leaving an hour before we were due at the restaurant. Ok I thought, we’ll walk for an hour. Turns out he had no intention of walking any extra distance so I went off on my own for the last 1/2 hour. After lunch he decided to walk home but not with me. Apparently I walk too fast for him! Having said that, he has walked every day this week and I am proud of him.

As I mentioned a week ago I was heading off to Harrison Hot Springs to facilitate a labour course. Now to explain Harrison, the days tend to be long for the facilitators in terms of things like daily course prep. Moreover, the food there is amazing and trust me when I say there is plenty of it. I decided to let myself go a bit and enjoy the food (and beverages) knowing that I had some big changes coming (more on that at the end of the blog).

I wanted to make sure I got at least some days with workouts in. This was a bit challenging because the gym didn’t open to 6:30am (too late for an early morning workout), there wasn’t really time at lunch to do much and there was only a short period of time between the end of classes and dinner. And so 3 days while I was up there I did a 5km run at 5:30am. What I found surprising is I haven’t been running a lot lately but these runs really were not that difficult. I would have done at least one more but the temperature that early in the morning was pretty cold and made far worse by significant wind (Wednesday when I ran I had tears streaming down my face).

After the success of those runs I have decided I need to build back up. The last 10km I did was in the summer and I want to put that back into a weekly event whenever I am working out here (there is no way that when I go to Mexico in May that I will be running). So, I have come up with a plan to build myself back up to being comfortable doing a 10km. I don’t think it will be all that difficult because I know I am pretty fit and have a lot of endurance. I am starting my training on Monday and it will also include walking up the dreaded Oxford hill at least 4 times a week. Pretty sure it won’t be long until I am back at long runs every Saturday.

Tomorrow my husband, sister and I are starting Dry February. Ok, I know it will already be Feb 18th but we have done this for several years we just opted to delay it this year because of Mexico and Harrison. This means for the next 4 weeks (ending Mar 16th which works in recognizing not so much St Patrick’s Day but the anniversary of my beloved father-in-law’s death) we will be completely alcohol free. I am more than confident that the few pounds I gained between Mexico and Harrison will easily be dropped between the running and lack of alcohol.

One last thing, Dry February is a fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society. My sister and I do this each year to help raise funds in memory of our Mom who had stage 4 breast cancer when she died, for our Uncle who not long after Mom passed away from leukemia and for our Granny who was a skin cancer survivor. So if you are so inclined please consider making a donation to the CCS this month to try and help find a cure for this horrible disease.