The Dawn of Janathon

I've come to the Janathon late, but I haven't been sitting on my arse until today. Oh no. I did start making the effort last year. Firstly I started training in the summer for the Run to the Beat half marathon in Greenwich, which I did in a not-too-disgraceful-considering-I-hadn't-run-consistently-for-about-3-years 2 hours 29. I decided to rest up for a few days after that, the months went past. I moved house. I thought about running, I even entered a few races. I thought more about running. Before I knew it the nights were dark, winter had happened and I still hadn't donned my trainers. Sometime in late November I realised I'd reached the humungous weight of 11stone. I'm tall (5'10) so this total did not make me Rick Waller but it did make me feel depressed at clothes not fitting, having a moonface, double chin and no willpower to cut back on the food side. I needed to take action in the exercise dept.

So I started to take advantage of the University gym where I work. Staff working for the Uni are really lucky in that they get it even cheaper than the students - c. £18 per month including classes and 50 metre swimming pool. (It is this perk, along with the long academic holidays that makes up somewhat for the crap wages.) Anyway, I started trying one or two classes, thinking it might help to have someone standing there shouting at me rather than me doing a bit of solitary toodling on a treadmill or a half-hearted pedal while watching silent old episodes of Friends on the tv monitor (I never remember my headphones). Simultaneously my colleagues in work were also starting to think the same. We started going to an LBT class on a Thursday which was everything I thought I'd hate, pumping music, annoying screaming instructor, no obvious warm up, narry a care for individual ability or what injury you might be nursing but, what a revelation, doing a variety of classes was fun, and you could pretty much ignore the instructor if they were yelling at you to do something impossible. (One particular sadist instructor at the circuits making us do an hour and a half of mostly pressups was one I defnitely put my fingers in my ears and went lalalala for the duration of.) So I lost a half a stone in a few weeks and Babs and I pledged to try all the classes on the timetable -apart from anything else it was a good way of getting me away from my desk for an hour.

Lunch times, evenings, LBT and core, yogalates, cybo ...I haven't done many of them yet but I did keep going up to mid-December then things started to fall off (metaphorically speaking) with the Christmas shutdown. I had been determined that this Xmas would not be the usual gorge and grog-fest, and it wasn't too bad really. All the family and inlaws came over and we had a great Christmas in our new house. Jon did a goose and red cabbage - the theme was German Christmas. It was when the guests had gone and we were left with the 40 pack of chocolate santas, our own bodyweight in cheese and a crate o' Bailey's that I really started to trough it. By the end of the hols I could not wait to get back to resume my old fitness regime -new year's resolutions here come I. (Aside from reinvigorating the fitness thing, I plan to read 50 books this year, drink less and avoid Pret a Manger, mainly coz unless I bring pack lunch 4 days out of 5, I cannot afford to go on holiday or buy clothes).

Week one of work saw me booking 2 classes at the work's gym like the good newly reformed citizen I'd resolved to be. Through no fault of my own, the first class of the year was cancelled, and the second one, on the 6 Jan saw me with a low level hangover (the drinking less hadn't really materialised, we still had too many bottles of wine in the house). Also had an invite to sis-in-law's for her birthday for cava, cake and new gambling triv. So that was a difficult choice. Anyway, I thought, there's always next week. Babs sighed inwardly, despairing of my readiness to cancel the first LBT of the year, at the drop of a hat. but then cancelled herself anyway, as she had to 'help her mum take the christmas tree down'....and I thought I was finding excuses.

Anyway, week 2, which we are now at the end of, we got back in the swing. Wednesday, I did a spin and core which has a relatively soft instructor, ("if you feel tired, take the resistance down a notch") and which the first ten minutes are normally spent getting the bikes out, fiddling about, giving up, finding another bike that works....and then Thursday evening did LBT class with Babs. We were late coming in and wondered if we'd arrived at the previous class over running by mistake but joined in anyway and it was ok. A lot of squats and bum squeezing and sit ups. My "core" was aching (at least I think it was, never quite sure what my core is), and there was a moment of embarassment where we had to get the top half of our body off the floor while lying sideways and a complete stranger held our feet down. I was the worst one there. I normally am at these things. Not sure if it's due to bad back (had chronic sciatica for a year which still troubles) or general weakness, lardiness. Anyway I tried my hardest and I got this nice smug glow that you get when the class is out of the way for the week. I also felt really motivated to do some running again at the weekend.

Then, I stumbled across this Janathon website, in which you pledge to do some exercise, mainly running but at least something, anything, every day for the month of Jan. It seemed the perfect tool for motivating me and some of the other blogs seemed really good, I've always enjoyed record keeping anyway so logging miles etc was a good spur too. I therefore name this day the Dawn of Janathon. Didn't manage to fit a run in on Sat 15th, but did go a walk up to Blackheath and back, a total of 4.something miles. Had a break while husband and I picked out a wardrobe in Lancelot antiques at the top of Blackheath Hill, then again while we bought a yummy bacon roll at the Blackheath Tea Hut, and watched the squirrels from a park bench in Greenwich Park but felt nicely tired by the evening and knee felt slightly like it was coming out of its socket, so it must have had some effect. The pulse raising stuff I'll start tomorrow. Honest.