Category: Diary

Back in August I mentioned that I was going to start C25k – that is, couch to 5 kilometres; a program designed to get you from the couch to running 5 kilometres in 9 weeks.

When I started it was a pie in the sky dream. I could huff and puff my way through half an hour of walking on the treadmill with maybe two minutes of jogging that would then cause me to collapse.

Well this morning I did it. I made it to half an hour of jogging. I can’t believe i achieved my aim, and so quickly. I jogged my thirty minutes straight through and I felt fantastic. When I look back on how far I’ve come in these few months I shake my head. If someone had have told me I’d be getting up at 5.30 in the morning (okay, today it was later but that’s a normal  weekday start now) to happily go and jog for half an hour! I would have laughed, and laughed, and laughed and gone and had quarter pounder for lunch at McDonald’s.

So now I’m consolidating, I’ll stick to the half hour jog for a couple of weeks before I contemplate my next step, maybe 8k or 10k. I’m also now concentrating on food. I’m using My Fitness Pal to keep an eye on what I eat and, oddly enough, I’m realising I have to eat more now as I’m still loosing weight and would prefer to stay where I am.

We’ve cancelled our Foxtel, again.

Last year Rae received a nice bonus at work and we decided to splurge on Foxtel, primarily for the football. We went with the HD Sports package and after a few months of introductory of pricing it reverted to $81 a month. Now the footy has finished we sat back and had a look at what we spent our money on.

The short answer was not much really.

We got to see a few extra games live that we wouldn’t have, mainly the interstate ones, but we didn’t watch many, if any, other games. It was great to have the games in HD (are you listening Channel 7!) but even then some were only upscaled from the 7 feed. Despite paying so much we still couldn’t watch the most important game of the year, no, not the Tigers v Doggies, I meant the Grand Final, in HD.

When it came to watching shows on Foxtel we didn’t. We may have had the music channels on a couple of times in ten months, maybe a flick through some channels on a handful of other occasions but with the options available on free to air television and the series we have on our media PC there was not one show Foxtel offered that we couldn’t source elsewhere. Not that we watch much television any more, it seems to be on in the background more for noise than entertainment.

So it was pretty much a no brainer and Foxtel has now gone. The money will most likelyn be redirected towards extra payments on the mortgage. We don’t regret having had it as we said all along it would be a trial and we will probably miss it for those few games we’d really like to watch next year but it’s simply not worth spending almost $1000 over 12 months just to watch a couple of matches.

Henry has been busy building little Lego of late and yesterday he went on a Doctor Who building spree.

Can you spot :

• The Doctor, Rory and Amy
• The TARDIS
• The Statue of Liberty menacing the hostel
• The Face Of Bo
• Tiny The Triceraptops
• The large robot from Dinosaurs on A Spaceshop
• A Dalek
• A modified blue Dalek
• A Cyberman
• A Weeping Angel
• A red eyed Ood on it’s ice planet
• The SIlence

We have some visitors in our garden today, a swarming buzzing group of buzzing visitors. They’ve formed a nice clump in the bush next to our letter box and this is how I first noticed them – the postie bypassed our place today, riding on the road to avoid us and I wondered why.

Well, here’s why.

I’m staying firmly inside. Mum tells me that I am allergic to bees, apparently I was taken to hospital after being stung by one when I was young. Although I have no recollection of this whatsoever I figure it’s better to be safe than dead. We’ve rung someone who will come and collect them this evening if they don’t  decide to leave by then.

Rae took the kids to the show this year and they’ve just returned, all running on no energy and 10,000kj of sugar. You’ll hear the crash from your place, where ever you are. Showbags were the highlight again and I even scored one although this year it wasn’t the Pepsi, Cadbury or Wizz Fizz bag, This year it was the Men’s Health bag. How times have changed, or, looking at the photo below, how they haven’t.

Don’t blink.

Today is a great day, a day of achievements. This morning I jogged for 20 minutes without a break and I hit my goal of 82kgs.

Just a couple of months ago I was over the moon when I managed to stumble through 2 minutes of jogging before collapsing in a heap. I remember being thrilled at being able to walk for 30 minutes on the treadmill before collapsing in a heap. Now I can jog for 20 minutes, walk for 5 minutes either side of this and feel like I can do some more.

As for the weight, well. When I had my little incident at the start of the year and I was asked in the hospital how much I weighed I probably muttered 97kg, which probably was being generous by a probably a couple of kilograms. I’m now floating around the upper 82s. When I set this as my goal I secretly thought I’d be happy to make it to 90kg. Now I’m here I have new things to learn – how to stay around this mark while continuing to exercise.

Inspiration to keep this up comes from weird places. The other day I popped in to Coles to grab some groceries. I was using the self checkout facilities when one of the check out chicks who knows me and the kids came up to me and said ‘wow, you’ve lost soooooooooo much weight’. I figure if your local cashier notices then you must be doing something right.

I’ve also made changes to my daily routine. My business is going gang busters at the moment and it’s made me realise I need every second of the working day to put towards it, at least for the next few months. So I’m taking a leaf out of my amazing wife’s book and setting the alarm. No, not for the crazy 5.00am time she gets up every week day, mine is for the much more civilised time of 5.50am so I can be ready to jump in the car when she gets home at 6 and head off. It’s worked so far this week, and worked again today when I had a sleep in until 7. I’m determined to make this part of my long term changes too. Better for me, better for my business.

I still have a way to go with my jogging – I’m only up to week 6 of the 9 week C25K program that is designed to get you from the couch to running 5 kilometres in a graduated program. After this morning though I reckon I can do it.

It must be spring. Bert was excited yesterday to notice our first lime growing. The poor lime tree has struggled, unlike the giant lemon tree next to it so it’s great to see this sign of life. As for the mushies, I swear they weren’t there yesterday but when I went out the front this morning there they were. Must remove them before the kids decides to sample one.

Not only can Mr Henry dress himself way cooler than I ever would be able to it appears he now has the moves down too. Ladies, lock up your daughters.

Today I noticed a face has appeared in our back fence.