The Moonwalk training plan I downloaded to help me prepare for walking the twenty six point two miles I’d somehow talked myself into included rest days. Strangely, I was finding these more of a problem than the walking days. With such a busy life fitting in two rest days a week seemed impossible. In mid November 2012 I was wrestling with this tricky problem and looking forward to my trip to London with the WLR girls.
14 November 2012
Thanks to Commando I now have my train tickets for the meeting with the WLR girls on Saturday. Apparently the plan is to meet up and go to Borough Market. London is not somewhere I visit very often, despite it being just seventy miles up the road and I wasn’t familiar with Borough Market so, in time honoured tradition, I Googled it. What did we do before we had Google? It turns out it’s one of the largest food markets in London. Possibly not the best of ideas for a meeting of members of an online weight loss group. There’s already lots of talk about ice cream and I can see this turning in a feeding frenzy. I don’t think there are enough hours between now and then to earn the calories for what’s coming somehow.
Of course, I could be a wet blanket and refuse to eat anything but that’s not what this journey is about. It’s a lifestyle change after all not a ‘diet.’ The word diet means the things you eat and drink, although there’s a whole industry built up around trying to make it mean deprival, denial and misery. I’ve done that enough times in the past to know it doesn’t work long term. The ‘diet’ comes to an end, ‘normal’ eating resumes and the weight comes back bringing a bit more with it. Yes, I watch what I eat but the point of the exercise is to change my eating habits for good, not just to shift a few pounds. To make a sustainable change there has to be room for the occasional bit of fun involving food, the odd night out, a day trying things in a food market. The emphasis here is occasional!
According to the training plan, today was supposed to be a rest day. There are meant to be two each week. I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with them to be honest. I don’t really do rest days. Sometimes I have a day without exercise at the weekend and use it as a cooking day but even then I usually have a walk up the Big Hill at some point. During the week there’s always a walk, be it a walk to work and back, a long walk or just a shopping walk. I don’t want to give one up just for the training plan. Apart from anything I can’t afford to lose the exercise calories, is my obsession showing again? The idea behind rest days is to give your body time to recuperate and recover from the training plan. My body is used to walking more or less every day so I’m hoping I can get away with just one rest day.
In the spirit of ‘rest day,’ I decided to try to slow my walks down today. Easier said then done. I think I may have forgotten how to walk slowly. The first mile was just under sixteen and a half minutes, slower than normal but not much. That took me to the middle of the Big Bridge and things did slow down a bit shortly after that because of an accident on the other side of the road. There were police and ambulances in attendance by the time I got there but I was quite upset to see a motorbike laying on its side on the grass verge. Way back in my youth I used to ride a motorbike so I hate to see accidents involving them. I’ve slid down the road a few times myself so I know exactly what it feels like. From what I could tell a large rental van had knocked the biker off his bike, he was nowhere to be seen so I imagine he was in one of the ambulances. I hope he wasn’t badly hurt.
The traffic on my side was backed up as people slowed to have a good look which made crossing the road a tough job. I didn’t bother turning the WalkJogRun off while I waited, which is technically cheating I know but it did take my time for the next mile to eighteen and a bit minutes. When I got to the estate I was slowed a bit more by some council workers. They had the path I normally take closed off with big piles of bark chipping spread out on plastic sheets and there were lorries delivering more. Once again I had problems crossing the road and finding a way round. As I walked past I noticed they had dug up the plucky little sunflower that’s been brightening my mornings. Not a happy bunny.
I spent the day tying up more lose ends and trying to get rid of lots of little niggling jobs, one of which was ordering a huge list of books from Waterstones using Arabella’s account. Eventually I managed to track down the account details and went onto the Waterstones website. Boy was it slow. It took me over an hour to find all the books and put them in my shopping basket. Then came the account details and the problems really started. I typed in the account number and the system froze. When it finally unfroze all the books were gone from my basket. I decided this was a good time to go to lunch and have an angry stomp round the block.
When I came back and tried again the same thing happened so I called the helpline. They told me I had to have a password. Great! I didn’t have a password and I knew Arabella didn’t either. Obviously my predecessor knew it but, as she hadn’t written it down anywhere, I was stuck. The helpline lady couldn’t help and suggested I phone the store the account was with. They couldn’t help either but did at least give me a fax number to fax the order through. Who uses fax machines in this day and age? We do have one but it took a while to find as it was hidden in a corner under piles of paper. I swear there was an inch of dust on it. Commando would have had a field day. I’ve faxed it through but I have no idea if anyone has got it, apparently they send an email confirmation (why they don’t just use email in the first place is beyond me) but so far I haven’t had one. Who knew it could be so hard to buy books?
There was another birthday in the office today. Gail turned twenty three. She even had the nerve to say she was getting old! Of course this meant more cake. Why does there always have to be cake? Once again I tried hard to resist but in the end I gave in (it was carrot cake and I do like a bit of carrot cake) but I had a really tiny piece. Fingers crossed there aren’t any more birthdays tomorrow.
