MrsB

I got up a bit grumpy this morning (you could probably tell based on my last post) but went to CrossFit regardless. At 5:40 there was no point in going back to bed knowing Oliver would be up around 6 and I knew I was going to feel better after the class – no one EVER feels worse after exercising.

So by 7am I was in Canary Wharf again and it was raining and totally miserable outside. During the warm-up we practiced the head stand and I usually just balance with my knees resting on my elbows. When the trainer asked whether I can lift up my knees I said “Nope”. [...]

Oliver’s nativity play + Joseph’s oufit
Oliver not really participating because he hates big crowds
Office Christmas dinner
Five working days
Seven CrossFit days [...]

Haven’t written a Run for Fun post since 1st of October when it was all about mixing up the training in preparation for the two half marathons I ran that month. Since then I’ve pretty much stayed with the same training schedule – CrossFit twice a week, 10k run on Wednesdays or Thursdays, and a long run (22-25km) on a Saturdays or Sundays. I haven’t done any hill repeats since my last half marathon though – CrossFit gives my muscles a good enough workout that I don’t feel the need to go mad on the hills at the moment!

My long runs have been to Richmond Park lately. I finally figured out how to run there without getting lost :) The quickest way is through Wimbledon Common but at this time of the year the common is very muddy so I’ve been taking the road around it which makes the loop a bit over 22km long – perfect for a weekend run.

I love long runs because they make you think about running, they make you preservere, they make you patient and they make you cherish how far you have come in the whole running journey.

The more I do it and the more distance I cover, the more I am seeing how running is just as good for my mind as it is for my body. [...]

Our little holiday in Corwall was so nice, coming back to London and running the Run to the Beat half marathon last Sunday was nice and then – then everything’s gone downhill. Little trivial things in the great scheme of things, but little things add up…

So what’s happened? Well, Tuesday and Wednesday in CrossFit have left me really sore again and for some reason I’m not able to find joy in that soreness this time. For some reason it hit me really hard on Wednesday morning that I’m at least 10 years older than everyone else in my class and just twice a week CrossFit makes me exhausted and sore. Also, there is only 1, sometimes 2 women in my classes… they are very nice but in general I feel really out-of-place in a big group of guys, I feel like a fraud, like a silly old geriatric trying to keep up with the young kids. The sabotager part of my brain has been saying: Who am I kidding? I will never have a six-pack. Those abs of mine have been shot to shreds by those lovely kids of mine. I will never be able to do 10 pushups or even a single pull-up. I’m an old woman.

I hate that part of my brain… [...]

MrB and I ran our 3rd Run to the Beat half marathon this morning. Almost 4 years ago he signed me up for the 2010 race when I was strongly in the mindset of ‘I cannot run’ and in pure fear of dying in front of a large audience, I started training and the rest is history!

First RTTB was freezing, second RTTB was HOT, third one today was freezing again. No amount of hopping in one place for 40 minutes before the start can keep your body warm so the legs felt totally stiff from the get go. I actually appreciated that it was really crowded in the beginning – it meant that I was forced to run slowly. I wish I could say that I warmed up and sped up but after a few kms but that didn’t happen. I did increase my speed a little every km from about 5km onwards, but the legs never felt loose. [...]

I baked some cookies last week using this recipe. The kids looked at them and said “What?!? Porridge cookies?! No thanks!”.

Great.

They demand porridge every morning but when I put oats in baked goods it’s a no-go?

Oh well. My brain was frazzled and not thinking straight due to the joy of PMS… so I ate two that evening. It would be no big deal if I didn’t know clearly that sugar does not do my body nor my mind any good. Darn hormones.

Anyway, these babies are good. I would bake them on a regular basis IF I could handle sugar – IF I didn’t feel noticeably healthier, happier, stronger when I do not eat sugar.

So after my lapse last week (I had a couple the next day as well :|), I am now back to my sugar-free existence and feeling much better now that the sugar-bloating has passed. [...]

I am officially crazy, I think. I enjoy setting my alarm clock for 5:40 every Tuesday and Thursday to get to CrossFit in Canary Wharf for a 7am class. Until this week my pre-crossfit excitement also included a great deal of pre-crossfit anxiety, but that is starting to ease off as I’m becoming more confident in my abilities and am now pretty certain that no CrossFit exercise will actually kill me.

Last Friday I showed up to class seeing that handstands and possibly handstand pushups were in the cards for the lesson. After realising what my mind had thought immediately upon learning that I realised that my mind is absolutely filled to the brim of Things I Cannot Do, handstands/headstands being one of them. Since my rope climbing epiphany though, I tried to be open minded and take it one step at a time – CrossFit trainers are absolutely awesome at breaking every daunting exercise into tiny little bits that bring it all together at the end. [...]

Running has been a lot of fun in September. Instead of my usual Wednesday and Saturday morning 10-15km runs I have mixed up the game a bit – I have run in the evenings, I have done some short and fast runs, I have done several 10km runs with a few hill repeats in the middle and I have done 3 long runs of 20-21.5km. [...]

When I got to CrossFit bright and early at 7am this morning, there was a row of ropes hanging from the ceiling. I laughed and thought “Oh this is going to be a waste of time, I can’t climb a rope to save my life!” Before I go any further, let me rewind 30 something [...]

Last Saturday as I was running, two little girls (5ish and 8ish) saw me and the younger said:”Why is she running??” The older one replied: “She’s trying to lose weight, that’s why!” … In the next few days that followed I have had two people tell me that they don’t understand why I exercise because [...]

As you can probably tell from the change of my post subjects in the last 12 months from mostly parenting stuff to mostly health and fitness stuff – I’m having a midlife crisis. It’s the good kind of midlife crisis though :), the kind that urges me to make positive changes in my life and [...]

On previous summer holidays in Estonia I’ve always run in the woods, but this time I wanted to do longer distances and I hit the streets – running on the streets makes the kilometres fly by a lot faster. In my mom’s little seaside town, there aren’t any other runners on the streets, so as [...]

There has to be a bit of sweet stuff in a sugar-free life, right? ;) Well, since I love Nakd Cocoa Delight bars, when I saw a recipe with the same ingredients on Wag Doll’s blog, I tried it out straight away. Verdict – I love them so much that I cannot make them very often because…

I’m pretty sure that as soon as you start running, you’ll hear “you have to cross train to avoid getting injured” more than once a day. The advice givers are other runners, websites you read, running blogs your read, etc.

I used to totally ignore any cross training sermons for at least a year …

So I went to a chiropractor last Thursday for the first time in my life. Mostly because sitting behind the computer all day long makes my throat/neck so tight that every day from about 11am onwards I feel like I’m suffocating. Not a nice feeling, trust me. …