Categories
Health

Uhm Running to PEI 2023

Getting to PEI (just catching up basically)

So it seems the last time I updated this was at the beginning of December. Which is really the last time I did anything consistently at all.

Here’s the post up to 4 December 2022.

And then from December to the end of January:

datewhatwherehow farhow longpace
22/1/2023RunrandomDef2.8 km28:5210:30
17/1/2023RunTreadmDef2.7 km28:0710:35
13/1/2023RunTreadmDef2.8 km28:0210:10
7/1/2023RunEG TrackDef2.6 km30:1911:43
4/1/2023RunTreadmDef3.0 km30:0510:00
3/1/2023Yoga Def 20:00 
2/1/2023RunTreadmDef2.6 km25:049:43
31/12/2022RunrandomRace5.1 km49:039:40
10/12/2022RunrandomDef2.8 km31:0611:14
6/12/2022RunrandomDef2.5 km26:1710:29

Oh look! ONE yoga session. One. Sigh.

28.5 km up to 4 December. And then 52.1 km (roughly) from then to the end of January – so 81 km. Which puts me really in the middle of nowhere it seems – between Newcastle and Newtonville in Ontario. Newtonville is considered the eastern end of the GTA (which, because I’m me, made me go look up “western end of the GTA” which is apparently Burlington. Distance from Burlington to Newtonville? 123 km by car as per google maps, 113 by foot.)

You’ll maybe notice a race in there. I decided to re-start running. Laura said “ohhh I like running with other people let’s run together.”

And then later, Laura “by the way, I may have roped Abby into this.”

And then “Oh and I found a race….”

So then Suzy (who’s moved on to marathons since the last time I ran with her) agreed to run the NYE race too.

The race was awful. I hadn’t run for 3 weeks before. I wasn’t nearly ready at all for a full 5k. But I did it and I didn’t die. Though maybe I should have had more than 1 pint before the race (even if I was the one driving).

I was worried (as usual) about being late. We were early enough to have pints before the race.

It did remind me though of all the reasons I like running (honestly it’s the time to myself, feeling the air and the rain (or snow) and being in the dark and the light and paying attention to new streets or sounds or smells. But the aloneness is awesome. And running by the lake? At night? In winter with the snow? BLISS.

As you can see from my tracking that bliss feeling kept me going for a week. And then I fell all to pot again with a really bad cold. So much so that I’m still trying to come back even though I’m writing this mid-February! I ordered myself a new Garmin running watch and also signed up for a new training app that I’ve never even heard of before. And well, tomorrow is a Monday so that’s as good a time as any to start again!

Categories
Around the house Family Finance Health

Setting up for #MoneyMasterclass

I shared the link last time for the twitter achieve of the money masterclass but here it is again.

Some items are required at the start:

• 2 notebooks

• 5 jars for T and I and 4 jars for Q

• a month at a glance calendar

• 500 things (beads, buttons, toothpicks, poker chips, beans, whatever you can gather)

• 2 highlighters – different colours

• Construction paper

and a box to hold everything in.

I have no idea what to use for the 500 of something that I am not gonna mind having around somewhere. I’m going to wait until they are actually explained to figure them out.

Next the first actual task: list your core values.

WHY does this come up so much?!?! lol

So here’s the link again to my August 2021 blog post. This time I’m going to print out the damn list of values and post it near my computer.

Task 2 – List all the things you want or need to do in the next few years. The idea is to empty out your brain: everything you have been planning to do/wish you had done and then label them:

A = top priority; then B; everything else = C

Key for me is “next few years” there’s really only so much I can do in that time frame (retirement ain’t in the cards just yet)

So here’s my list – I think maybe I have too many A priorities but oh well!

A – improve my health

A – do things together as a family more

A – pay down debt

A – set up an emergency fund of 3 – 6 months of expenses!!

A – stop accumulating stuff

B – travel more

B – contribute more to our RRSPs / TSFAs (retirement savings)

B – create more (stitch, paint, play piano)

B – read more / learn more

C – move to a smaller place (still walkable; with some outside room; dog friendly)

Some more stuff to think about:
WHY do I want to do this?
By WHEN do I want to get it done?
WHAT are the steps I have to take?
WHO can I ask for help?

Categories
Around the house Health

Getting better

I posted on facebook that I feel like I should be better at some things than I am and so I am going to focus and do my best – said for perhaps the 47 hundredth time….

First up: a daily schedule that builds in some mindfulness skills to help me accept me more. I’m actually going to a weekly class right now to help me learn some skills around being able to step back from stressful situations and not go into my own little spirals all the time.

Also some general medical stuff: Since Edgar joined us I’m definitely walking more every day which is great. I also need to follow up on a referral for a sleep study as well as putting some thought to some more focused activities than “walking the dog.”

Also important: thinking about what I need to do to decrease the stress I put on myself (and yes, I know I put it on myself). So one of the things is money, obviously. So I went back and found the #MoneyMasterClass that Gail Vaz-Oxlade did on twitter back in 2020. I’ll be doing that as I can – so sometimes more than one task in a day and other times skipping a few days in between.

Another is the house – I like our house but it’s so much to keep on top of and clean and stuff. So I have a household planner that I’m going to try and stick to as well.

I guess it’s a sort of “fuck I’m turning 50 soon” level of motivation.

Wish me luck!

Categories
Health

Values – what matters

Mindfulness day 2 part 3

For me one of the fun parts of trying to do something again is going back and re-reading what I did the last time. So in August 2021 I wrote this blog post about values. And you know what? It still stands. I’ve read and re-read it and I think now I couldn’t really add or say anything any better.

So there we go. I dreaded writing this for a while and after reading and reflecting, I’m done. Now where is that meme…

with thanks to the US National Park Service

Relationship with self series – Calm

I also listened to the first session on the calm app in a series called “Relationship with self.” There are 15 sessions in the series – about 10 minutes each.

The first is called “self-trust.” It is about the importance of trusting yourself and how that can seem so hard to do when all you see when you look back are the mistakes you’ve made over the years. So instead the idea is to to try to look at the good choices too. You’ve made it this far; you’ve avoided problems; you’ve started this journey etc.

So that’s my lesson for today. Sometimes it’s not enough to not focus on the bad, sometimes you need to search for the good.

Categories
Health

It all starts with a single step

Getting Healthy 001

A few years ago (2016) I signed up for NerdFitness. It looks all different now but I signed up for a lifetime plan so I still have access to the basics that I want, and need, right now.

I don’t know if these posts will make it on the blog or not but I definitely needed a place to also type out what I was doing, along with my little notebook.

So here’s the plan: on Sunday 27 August I will step on a scale and I will take all sorts of measurements. I have a chart in my notebook for both. Measurements will be redone every two-ish months. Weight will be redone every two weeks. I’ll see how that goes.

The chart for measurements is complete – it’s just boxes to fill in.

The chart for weight is gonna be a dot graph. So the X axis represents the dates – every two weeks from 28/8 to 29/1 fits on a single page of my notebook (this is gonna change though; I want a big enough notebook for 1 month of lines on a page so I will have a longer time scale for this graph too; I’m gonna pick up a new notebook as soon as we’re home). The Y axis is gonna be the weight.

Petty annoyance: I prefer thinking in KG but my scale is in pounds BUT now I figured out how to switch it to KG. So now the petty annoyance is just going to be that it seems like everyone else in the world thinks in pounds for weight. I’m still gonna stick to KG. So I’ll fill in the Y axis with whatever I weigh on the 28th and then each line will either be 0.5 of a kg or a kg – knowing I can put the damn dot for the weight anywhere in there.

yellow tailors tape

The next is supposed to be finding my “Big Why” – I’m supposed to find the motivator for changing what I’m doing. The idea is that articulating the reason(s) will help when you get stuck: “Those who have a ‘why’ can bear with almost any ‘how.” The more personal, the more “deep” the better or something. So not just “It’s good to be healthy” – of course it is, we all know that but it’s not enough to have had me change up till now so it’s definitely not gonna be enough going forward.

And then I’m supposed to share the big why(s). I’ll have to think about how best to do that. I have a lovely group of online friends I’ve known, heck for over fourteen years now, and I have shared my start with them. We’ll see if I get around to sharing that part publicly or not. But for now, I guess it’ll suffice to say I’ve come up with a couple of Big Whys and shared them with Toby and a small group of friends.

Then my plan for the week from a health perspective:

– find time for mindfulness every day

– move a little bit more than yesterday

– drink water and take my iron & vit d

I did write all that up there before August 27, 2022.

And I started off well.

And then life happened and Toby went to BC for a couple of weeks and I just did my best to get the basics done while he was gone.

So now he’s back and I’m gonna re-start and so I am going to post this now as a way to help keep me accountable. By Sunday October 2 I want to re-read my notes from back in August and see how I can plan out a re-fresh starting on October 11 – yes, a Tuesday but that’s when I will be back from almost a week in PEI!