Exercise for pleasure and profit

The other night Laura persuaded me to sign up for Race for Life. That is unfair because she didn't so much persuade me as ask me when I was bit tired and therefore have lost all sense of what was sane. Not that Race for Life is exactly a marathon or anything, I know it's only a 5k for charity and it's acceptable to walk if you need to, but it has reminded me how little I run or take any exercise at all now. I wrote this in August, about how I was finally beginning to get the point of exercise and how it can be a joyful and fulfilling part of life. Yea… I lost sight of that quite quickly.

In light of the Race for Life I am determined to rediscover the joy of exercise that I had found for a week or so when I wrote that post.

Another development since I wrote that post is that there is a fair bit more than me now than there as then. The main way I know this is that stretch marks have appeared on my belly. I have never before had stretch marks on my belly. I have had them on every other fleshy part of me since I was about 13 but I had managed to avoid any belly ones somehow. The appearance of these purple stripes on my belly shows that a year where I've eaten around 50 lasagnes and drunk a hell of a lot of red wine has taken its toll. I've never been obsessed with being thin, I don't think that being thin is the end goal of life. But I don't feel like I'm at optimum me. The extra me that is causing the stretch marks is just sitting there as a reminder that I have lost sight of my joyful exercise plans. I want to lose this extra plodge as a side-effect of becoming more active and healthy, not as the goal of it.

MY GOALS:

2/3 runs per week

/a> I'm going to start with C25K again and actually finish this time!! Before I just kind of went for random runs and ignored the C25K program. I tend to go for a run first thing on a Saturday morning because there are less people about but when I go to my local park I find that the few people who are around are random old men who are out at 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning for no discernible reason. They have no dog and no obvious purpose except to freak me out and watch me as I jog red-faced around the park trying to avoid eye contact with strangers. I have realised the way to avoid these weirdos and annoying dog walkers is to run along quiet residential streets when everyone who lives in the houses is asleep and there is no one walking for leisure. I just need my trainers and Pulp on my itunes.

1/2 swimming sessions per week
I like swimming because you are too busy not drowning to care about anyone else (this is if you are swimming proper laps) and, despite the skin-tight outfit, your body is largely obscured by the water so no one can see your tits jiggling. I need to actually join the gym I've been planning to join for over a year now. We can get a really good deal for the basic council gym through work (guess where I work) and I've still not got my bum down there and joined. Once I have I shall be swimming all the time and basically become a fish. In my mind I think that swimming is good complimentary exercise for running. I think I've made this up.

Try to get my fitbit up to at least 4 dots most days.
This will mean that my life is not completely sedentary and hopefully means I will get a bit less flabby. Wearing a fitbit really makes you aware of how much (or how little) you move. This is quite depressing for someone like me who has in a 2 or 3 minute walk to catch a bus which stops bang outside their destination. I can almost see my bus home from my desk. I am challenging myself to get off the bus stop 1 stop early morning and night just so that I get 5 or so extra minutes of activity each time. So far this has not really happened but I really need to start taking responsibility for myself as an adult human person!

Recent things I have read about exercise - Laura herself and this