Monday, August 12, 2013

It Started with a Pair of Sneakers ...


... and a trip to Singapore to see my lovely sister.  Some things just seem to happen at the right time and for me all the i's were dotted and t's were crossed and I was given a challenge I couldn't refuse.

I have been lucky enough to spend some quality time with Caryn, one of my sisters dear friends while I have been in Singapore.  She is amazing, she is 50, regularly runs, has done marathons, triathlons, and last year did her first ever half iron man! I kid you not, if you wanted to be inspired she is perfect and has decided to run the Singapore Marathon on the first of December.  You can follow her latest sporting adventure on her new blog A Year in Tiong Bahru, Singapore - Marathon Season.  Our relationship went slightly downhill when she challenged me to find a 5km race to do on the same day ... hmmm.  It IS the right time for me to start thinking about myself and, in particular, my health and fitness so I said yes!!

I like setting goals.  Most of my goals have involved others, especially my children.  One I did complete for myself was to blog a year of pinterest creations ... the first person to achieve it and I loved doing it, so did Pinterest which was lucky :o)  This time round the goal is more personal.  I have often given myself private health and fitness goals but have never completed them, always some of the way but never to the end of the goal!  My solution to this is to make my goals public and blog about them for the next year ... Making myself completely accountable to me, Caryn, and anyone else watching this amusing adventure!

 So the Goals for the coming 365 days:

On the first of December I am going to participate in a 5km race (this race is in Auckland, New Zealand), then at the six month mark compete in a 10 km race, ending this years goals will be a half marathon (she says hopefully!).  I am not a natural runner and am not really fit ... I love playing sports but haven't joined any teams since moving to the Hawkes Bay earlier this year and my sweet walking partner now lives 6 hours away so not that convenient!  I can happily run up four flights of stairs but I would pass out if you made it ten!    Hopefully that gives you some idea of my fitness levels or lack of fitness more appropriately.  I am going to get Caryn to help me with what I should be doing and seek her advice OFTEN so I don't mess this up.  Caryn's first piece of advice was to use a couch to 5Kms program to get off to a good start. I went to the app store and found plenty of apps that have a couch to 5kms program, there are also plenty freely available online.  I went with the 10K Runner: 0 to 5K to 10K run training app as it had great reviews.

The second part of this journey is to also drop a substantial amount of weight.  There is no goal attached to this part except that it HAS to be double digit kilos :o)  I am going to mess around with my diet and also blog about it as a way of tracking the experimentation and, once again, keeping myself accountable.  I don't believe in there being one diet that will work for everybody as we all function differently internally.  Hopefully by blogging about it, I might encourage others to give something new a go or hopefully there is lots of feedback and I can get plenty of new ideas from you guys as well.  Failing any feedback, there is always my go-to bible of knowledge Pinterest for plenty of inspiring ideas to try!

Caryn and I are both hoping we will inspire more people to come join our journey, get involved, even find a running race that suits your fitness ability, blog about it, and we can create a supportive group of like minded people ... if we can all inspire one another I am certain the journey to health and fitness will be far more prosperous and definitely a lot more FUN! 

Anyone interested leave a comment so I can follow you and add a link at the side of this blog so others can follow along too!


4 comments:

  1. I started with couch to 5k a couple of years ago. I'm now 4 weeks away from my first half marathon (The Great North Run in the UK). I'm facing a 12.5 mile run this Sunday and am terrified, but I'll do it anyway :0)

    I came to this blog from your Lego picture frame pinterest post. I'm making them :0)

    Good luck with this new challenge - you obviously have dedication, I think that is a large part of the journey.

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    1. Thanks Discoknits, I have just started following your journey too!

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  2. Whoop whoop! Good for you, Kirsty! I've often said I want to do something like this so maybe it's time to get off my butt and finally do it!

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    1. Come on Jen, we can do it together!!! Find a program and get started so we can support each other :o)xx

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