Shifting my ass

After the laziest weekend I can remember for quite some time, it's back to work and the start of what will no doubt be another thrilling week.



I've spent most of this morning catching up on reading other people's blogs (yes, I know I'm at work - but you didn't actually expect me to do any did you?), and working out my exercise plan for the rest of the week.



I'm off to the ball this Friday, and given that there is likely to be the most food ever there I want to have an active week to offset a bit of the damage. There was me, wonderingly thinking how much more active I am these days. Then I read some of the posts from the girls over at The Girls Cycling Compendium blog - I now feel about as active as a hungover slug suffering with a bad thyroid condition. Possibly even slight lazier than that even.



Those girls are freaking amazing - one of them did an "adventure race" - which is basically some crazy mixed-discipline race across open country-side in pairs or teams, combining whatever odd-ball sort of transport is required - this one started with 4 hours of kayacking, something like a 100km bike ride and then a 30 mile run. Yep 30 miles - I thought I must have mis-read that, and maybe it said 3 miles, or 30 kms or something, but no - 30 freaking miles!!!! And then just to round it off another 4 hours in a kayak. What the bloody hell?????? And I say she "did" an adventure race - she does them all the time. They also do 24 hour endurance races, and go for a night ride from one end of the Mendip hills to the other, on a bloody week night no less. I know the Mendips. And they're big.



They're crazy. Crazily motivated, crazily fit and just plain, out-there bonkers. And you know what - I'm jealous. How the hell do you get so good at stuff?? I mean, to put it in perspective, 2 hours 2o mins of pretty flat singletrack (mountain biking) at a sensible pace with lots of breaks killed me last weekend. Running for 20 mins kills me. Walking up the Worcestershire Beacon and back down kills me (well, maybe not kills me, but leaves me pretty damn tired). And I thought I was getting fitter. Not properly fit yet - but getting there, and I now see that I'm not even vaguely close to it.



Depressing.



However, since I am not Superwoman, and in fact am only a 28 year old girl, with a desk job, losing some weight and trying to get just a tad healthier, I should stop worrying that I'm not. Instead I shall go to my classes tonight and Wednesday, go for a run tomorrow and either go for a bike ride on the (somewhat smaller than the Mendips) Malvern Hills on Thursday, or walk up the Beacon, since I've just mentioned it, and I haven't done that in forever! I'm feeling tired just thinking about it, but I'd rather feel tired and content that I've done it, than just blah and probably still low on energy because I haven't.



Grumbling aside, I do have some health targets this year though - firstly, I shall be heading to Scotland in July with friends for what will probably be a week of both intense activity and also concentrated slothfulness / drinking. There's shit-loads of amazing mountain-biking and walking to be had straight from the cottage door and I want to get on with it. Also, the bay is perfect for wind-surfing and the boys take their kit up. I'm not as confident a wind-surfer as they are, but the last two years I've wimped out of even trying it up there - not so this year, I've determined.



Then in August I'm heading to Croatia for 10 days with my girlfriends. Our holidays are always pretty active, usually containing a lot of walking (I really suffered last year in France with this - bloody Alps) and whatever other sundry silly activities take our fancy (so far this has included canyoning, white-water rafting and climbing Via Ferrata style) - any fitness improvements would be good so I don't die and spend the entire trip grumbling how knackered I am. Not that that makes any difference because they're so used to my grumbling that they just ignore it and tell me to just get my butt to the next corner.



And finally, there's windsurfing in November in Egypt. I did this last year and it was great, but there's nothing like spending a week surrounded by hard-bodied, gnarly wind-surfing dudes and svelte surf-bunnies to make you think that you could do better by yourself and at least make an effort to look after yourself and push yourself that bit harder.



Change of subject: I've also got to work out when I'm going to have time to meet Lee-from-Bristol for a drink. Probably sometime next month at the rate my diary is filling up. But I'd better do it soon, because I get bored if I spend too long chatting to someone on the t'interweb before I meet them in real life, and also form too precise a picture in my head of how they'll be and somehow end up being disappointed. That aside, I spent a very lazy evening lying on my bed last night reading and bouncing silly emails backwards and forwards to him full of witty bantersome nonsense.



Suppose I really should get on and do some work now. Ciao.