Another New PB! On A Roll! - A Triathlon Diary

I only went and bloody did it again!

A second PB.... 2 runs in a row! I am so chuffed! I have to give a shout out, again, to my wonderful father who coached we through the whole thing.

At around 3km I hit a wall and thought I lungs were about to spontaneously combust but Dad wouldn't let me stop - or slow down - and by the end of the 5km we had actually picked up the pace again and we knocked a whole chunk of time off.

I genuinely went into shock at the end when I actually realised what I'd achieved and had a little weep.

Yes! You read that right, I cried at the end of a run.... I am a massive emotional wet rag but I don't really care because I am so damn proud of the progress I've made.

From the run last Monday, I knocked off a further 1 minute and 12 seconds..... that's a total of 1 minute and 55 seconds faster over just 3 runs. 

Here is what I captioned the photo with on Instagram:

• Absolutely bloody ecstatic about this! Not only did I get a 2nd #personalbest time for the 2nd week in a row. But I knocked a whole minute and 12 seconds off the same run! Yes, that's 72 seconds faster over the same distance!!!! I am so f***ing chuffed!! I finally feel like I am getting back to my #athletic self - it's taken a damn long time and a lot of tears, frustration and nearly throwing the towel in but I finally feel SO close to being as fit as I was when I was in #training with my #rugbyteam. I still struggle with what I #see when I look in the mirror. There are still so many things that I want to #change about my body but I KNOW that there is an #athlete inside me that is finally making an appearance. My body is so much #stronger than I believe it to me and the biggest #barrier I face ever time that I work out is my #mind. I was told recently that your brain is your strongest #muscle - you have to train it the hardest to get fit and healthy. This run proves to me that I am so much more capable than I give myself credit for and I need to push myself past the limit where I think I can't go on anymore. My limit is a lot further away than it initially appears. I got my running bug back!!! 

• #instarunners#triathlon #running #swimbikerun#100happydays #day64 #5km#trainingrun #PB #72seconds#incredible #iamsostrong #thisgirlcan#BOOM #weightloss #fitness #health

If you would like to check out my Instagram account for more training photos and other randomness, my username is megs_100

A New PB! - A Triathlon Diary

I not only have a triathlon coming up next month, I also have a 10km run. So, all the run training I'm doing is helping (hopefully) towards both of these events.

I've only recently got back into running to the point where I'm enjoying it. I think having my dad as a training partner really helps as he is a great source of encouragement and a fantastic pace maker.... and he doesn't let me slow down!

For a while, back in 2014, I was doing ParkRun on a Saturday morning at a local but fell out of the habit over the winter. My fastest 5km at ParkRun was 34:56 which I was happy with. I was only a year out of major knee surgery, I was over weight and unfit.

On June 1st 2015 (my second real training run in about 4 months) I smashed this time out of the water! I was SO pleased!

Considering that I have not been doing a lot of running training, I am super pleased with knocking 43 seconds off of my personal best! It's gives me a lot of confidence for the training runs still to come and also, the actual event that are now less than a month away! 

#100happydays Project Days 57 to 63

Another week has come and gone! It's been a long and very busy one but a week that I have thoroughly enjoyed.

Day 57) Dad took me out on a training run for my upcoming 10km run and a triathlon the following weekend. I got a PB! Beating my previous fastest time by over 30 seconds. I was so pleased, having a training partner rocks!

Day 58) Ballroom time! I'm hoping to move up to Thursday class soon as Tuesdays are starting to become frustrating as I'm not dancing as much as I'd like to. Will be speaking to my teacher to see how long it'll be until she'll let me move up. Hopefully it's soon! 

Day 59) Mum introduced me to Shepperton Lake this week. It's a stunning lake where you can go and lake swim. Such good practice to triathlon and a fantastic experience in general. 

Day 60) HEAT WAVE! It was hot today that, after a very long lunch duty in the playground, I treated myself to a Mint Magnum. Yum! 

Day 61) I crashed my parents date night on Friday and wandered to the pub with them. Mum then bought me dinner so it was a double win for me, catch up with the 'rents and a free dinner. 

Day 62) Back to lake on Saturday morning for another swim! Was so beautiful in the early morning sun. 

Day 63) Car boot win! Found a bean bag chair! It is the comfiest thing I have ever sat in.... absolutely love it. The rest of my spoils weren't bad either! I do love a car boot now! 

So, there you have it, yes another week of happy times finished. 

Here's to another week!

I hope everyone reading this is finding time to appreciate the little things in life. Even if they don't seem to mean much, the tiny moments of happiness we can find in day to day life make a whole of difference in the long run.

What is your happy moment of today?

M xx

90s Flashback

My colleague, Sarah, as anyone who has read my post on Car Boot Sales will know, is a bit of an addict when it comes to a bargain. Her most recent random purchase was a pair of roller blades. The old inline skates of the 90s. I was transported back to my childhood of S Club 7, The Spicegirls, crimped hair and demin skirts. It was fantastic. There is little better than re-indulging in 90s pop culture!

When Sarah told me that she had started skating, I was mighty impressed. We were ice skating when she told me that she'd been practicing which made a lot of sense as apparently (according to herself) she was finding it much easier this time around.

I remembered that I had a pair of old skates in the garage, untouched for at least 5 years. Sarah was so enthusiastic about the whole idea that I thought I'd join her for a session or two - thinking that it would help with my ice skating and that I could try and learn some fancy footwork tricks that I have wanted to learn since I first started ice skating.

After a little hunt, and a near miss with my sisters very similar but 3 sizes too small skates, I found mine. Covered in dust and half buried under a pile of wetsuits, there they were. Thank goodness Mum is a hoarder of all our old stuff!

Appearing from the garage with my skates at 6:10am meant that I received some rather strange looks from my father. 'Megan, what are you doing?'
'I'm buying an elephant... what does it look like, Dad?'
'Oh right, okay. Well. have fun.' Was pretty much how the conversation went.

I was quite looking forward to end of the day when Sarah and I could strap on our skates and roll off down the road. It was going well for about the first 5 mins until I realised that my skates weren't working quite so well as I remembered. I can skate just fine, but it was taking a hell of a lot of effort to get going and to keep going. The minute I stopped pushing forward the skates would stop... it was all push and no glide. I was losing Sarah in the distance as she powered off on her lovely, new, still in good condition skates. I was getting more and more frustrated by the fact that I couldn't actually skate in my old, tatty inlines.

I stopped in the park for a while as Sarah did a few small laps of the path. She looked like she was having a great time and that only made it more annoying as I wanted to join in. 'Damn skates!' I kept thinking. If I was bad at skating, I would have been less annoyed but when your skates are letting you down and you can actually skate fairly it, it is SO irritating to have to sit and watch someone else skate around.

The evening ended in me walking home in my socks, thoroughly annoyed that I couldn't enjoy my evening. Feeling really ticked off, I went home with the mind to give my skates a good service - this has not happened yet. I'm going to keep my eyes open at the car boot tomorrow for a new pair. If there aren't any there, I shall take mine apart and give them a good clean!

Here's to a more successful session soon - after I can work out why my skates are being so damned frustrating. (First world issues)

At This Point I'll Try Anything!

I have stuggled with the way I look for years. I can look in the mirror and tear my reflection apart with criticism for the way that my body looks. I find it really difficult to find clothes that I like, clothes that do my body favours. When I look at myself, I don't see the beautiful bits first - I have to work really hard to find them after I've dissected every little thing wrong with my reflection.

At uni, things got a little better. I joined the women's rugby team and started training for at least 8 hours a week. I wasn't even thinking about what I was eating because I was training so much. My diet was horrendous and I drank way too much - but I still managed to drop to 180lbs. I felt great, I was confident, my body actually looked good and I didn't hate buying clothes because I could find stuff that I liked and that fit my body properly.

Then I busted my knee! For nearly 2 years, I could barely walk, let alone run or tackle someone. I gained a whole bunch of weight and went back to hating what I saw in the mirror. I am still there.

Nearly 2 years after my op, I am still a long way from liking what I see. It has taken me a long time to get back to training well, my eating habits have been less than brilliant and quite frankly... some days I just haven't been bothered to try. There are days where I feel like all my efforts are pointless and that it won't work, whatever I try.

A friend of mine is a personal trainer and a really good guy. He did some sessions with me once I was signed off of physio after my operation. It was a really good way to get back into my fitness - having a coach there to push me. There were many times when I was on the verge of throwing up all over his gym but he kept me going. Then I left uni and moved home, got a new job and had to work out to fit working out into a new routine.

He recently recommended the C9 programme to me, it's a detox and cleanse, that is designed to give your metabolism a reboot. It goes hand in hand with the F1 and F2 programmes - which are designed to continue the work started by C9 and aid further weight loss.

It's a little pricey but I had some extra money lying around at the end of the month and as the title of this post suggests, I'm rather desperate. So I thought I'd give it a go. Today is day 1 of the 9 day programme and it's going well so far. The first two days are a total cleanse - there is very little food involved and a lot of shakes and water and supplements to drink. It's got me going to the loo more than is socially acceptable but I'm at home alone so I think that's okay. You can eat veg on the detox. They are called free foods so I'm munching on some spring onions this afternoon as I'm quite peckish!

I don't really know what to expect from this programme but I'm hoping to drop a bit of weight and give my body a chance to reboot and get back on track with weight loss!

Upping my exercise regime again too and will be changing my diet after the detox is finished to a low card, high protein diet to start putting on some muscle for my triathlon.

I know it's all about little steps at a time but I'm finding things very frustrating at the moment.

Watch this space for updates of how the next 9 days go!

M xx

Open Water Frolics - A Triathlon Diary

As my next triathlon draws ever closer, I am throwing myself back into training and mixing it up a little. This time, I am adding a lake swim to the schedule and Wednesday this week was the first swim at Shepperton Lake for me.

After feeling so uncomfortable during my first lake swim at Eton Dorney, I was feeling a little apprehensive about getting into open water again. The whole set up was fantastic with safety staff set up around the lake and a canoe on the water to keep an eye on everyone as well.

For a new swimmer, you have a one to one walk through of the facilities and then a swim check by one of the coaches to make sure that you are safe in the water. After my 'tour' where I was shown the different course, I went to get changed. The courses were mildly terrifying. Unlike the session at Eton Dorney where we just swam between two buoys up and down and then returned to shallow water, at Shepperton the loops are out into the lake and back. There is no shallow water once you set off - once you're committed you've got to keep going until the end (or hail that canoe to come and rescue you). So that was added to my list of concerns about the session.

With wetsuit on, swimming hat sorted and having been reassured that the water wasn't too cold by some other swimmers I went for my swim test. It was fairly low key, a lovely lady just watched me swim out to the first set of buoys and gave me a wave of approval. Sounds easy? Should be but the cold is something that I'm still getting used to. It takes a while for your body to adjust, and putting your face into the water just makes you want to inhale because of the cold. It steals your breathe - quite literally. So, I bobbed slowly out to the first buoys for the swim test, just doing lazy breaststroke. I was competent in the water and my 'spotter' was happy for me to continue but I was still trying to get my breathing under control and my body to get used to the temperature.

It didn't take as long as it did at Eton but it is still a very strange sensation, submerging yourself in murky water and not being able to control your breathing. Once I got into the rhythm of it, however, it felt brilliant! The water wasn't too cold, there weren't too many swimmers on the course and the sun was shining beautifully over the lake. It was idyllic, being in the water as the sun started to set, with the sound of the swimmers around me and birds in the surrounding trees.

Yes, I had the occasionally fleeting thought that there could be something gruesome lurking in the bottom of the lake. Occasionally, I realised that I was way out in deep water and if I got tired, there was no floor for me to take a break on, nor was there a wall for me to push off from at the end of a lane... and there were a few points where I had a mini panic at the seaweed that loomed out of the water at my face (I hate seaweed with a passion - it's slimy and smell and twines itself around your toes.... EURGH!!).

But on the whole, it was just a magical swim. I think I am truly converted to the lake! It was so peaceful, I got out of the water feeling so relaxed. Can't wait to go back next Wedensday. Will try and do two laps of the 400m course. Don't think I'm ready to attempt the 750m course yet.

M xx

A Reminder Of How Good Life Is...

This is not really a revelation for me, I know how lucky I am to have so much love and joy and ease in my life. But I had a fairly vivid reminder of this yesterday evening.

I was on a beautiful walk with my parents. They have set themselves a challenge to walk to the pub once a weekend during the summer and they asked if I wanted to join them last night. With nothing else to do and the promise of dinner paid for by Mum, how could I refuse?

The sun was out, the canal was gently flowing - carrying leaves and blossom along in the dappled sunlight of the evening. It was so picturesque. I think sometimes in our busy 21st century lives with laptops, Netflix, cameras and smart phones we forget to just observe the breathtaking beauty around us. I know I'm guilty of it. I took my camera with me last night with every intention of sharing the photos on Facebook or Instagram and let the world know what I'd been up to. In the moment, however, I didn't want to see the world through the lense of a camera and I didn't feel the desire to post it on a timeline. I just wanted to be in it - to stand in the moment and watch the river, hear nature and feel the sun on my skin. (Yes, my inner romantic was on a major high at this point)

We were about half way through the walk when a man came round the corner in the opposite direction. He was disheveled, looked exhausted and had three huge bags of goodness knows what strapped to his back. He was carrying another massive bag in his hand. The load he was carrying was about double the width of him and towered a good foot over his head. It must have been excruciating to carry.

Now, I don't know his story. He may have made that decision to be a nomad - he may be the happiest man on earth, moving from place to place and experiencing life in it's most primal/basic way. But I couldn't help thinking about the circumstances that someone must have to be in to make carrying your world on your back and having no home the best option... or the only option. I could never imagine what it would take for life to become so bad that I had no one to turn to, no one to offer me help and no where I could go which forced me to take my life with me.

I suppose, in some respects, this is a very narrow minded view. My family is so 'root' orientated. We have always had a home, I have always had somewhere to come back to. The same with my grandparents - they have always been the roots of our family. Supporting us, welcoming us into their home whenever we asked, providing advice, love and safety since before I was born. Not having that support network is something I could never imagine.

I know for others, family like if just not the same. But I would hope that no one was ever so lonely that they had no-one at all. Everyone should have somewhere to turn - if they choose to do so. As I watched the man walk on my heart went out to him and I prayed that it was his choice to be there and not a result of having literally no other option.

At the pub, whilst I was having a lovely meal and a pint, I realised the biggest problems in my life right now are that I'm too scared to ask a guy on a date and that I'm not 100% happy with the way my body looks. My life is so damn easy! I don't have to worry about where the next meal, pay cheque, or warm bed is. I know when I come home at the end of work that there will be food and shelter. I get in my car in the morning without even thinking about it some mornings. Looking at this man, who appeared to have little more than nothing, I was reminded of just how much I have without even registering it. I am so very lucky and so very grateful for what I have.

Regardless of whether that man had made the choice to live like that or whether he was left with no other choice, I was returned home feeling incredibly glad of the life I have and a little ashamed at how, sometimes, I forget to be thankful for all the small pleasures I have on a daily basis.

Next time you're in starbucks buying an iced coffee or flicking threw the TV channels, moaning that there is nothing on to watch across 200 channels.... just remember how bloomin' lucky you are to have those 200 channels to be frustrated with or how nice it is to actually have £4 to spare on a coffee that you don't 100% need. Spare a thought for people who have it worse than you, not because you deserve to feel bad for having money or a TV license but because we have to remember how lucky we are to live in a world where we can have such blessings at our finger tips without really registering just how blessed we are.

Be happy, be blessed, be considerate.
And observe the world around you.... it really is so beautiful.... how about you put down the camera and just look with your eyes. Experience the world first hand.... not through your Facebook updates.

Happy Saturday everyone!
M xx