I’ve not written for a while. I’ve found myself in between goals for a while. After the coast to coast I decided I would concentrate on improving my eating habits and get myself into bikini shape for our holiday later in the year.

The crazy thing about doing a lot of endurance training is the tendency to both gain weight and lose muscle. When you spend many hours running and cycling you need to eat a lot and its easy to get into bad habits. Furthermore it can be difficult to find time to do strength work or do it well as you are too tired.

So with a gap between the last adventure and the next goal I decided to focus on strength and diet for a while. The difference has been quite significant. I do not have a six pack and don’t really want to tbh but I’m definitely stronger, have more muscle, less fat and my clothes are all feeling looser. Most importantly I’ve managed to get rid of most of my bad eating habits, well bar one.

I’m a lover of lattes. I’m keeping that one. I guess you have to have one vice and thats mine. Well the cake that goes with it is also appreciated. Ok and a Gin and Tonic doesn’t go amiss either. Ok, so three habits then. 🤔

I’ve now reached a point where motivation is wavering in terms of my re sculpting progress. I’m pretty much where I wanted to be so I’m already thinking about the next endurance event and once again increasing the cardio.

I’ve trained in the past for an Ironman. Twice I think. Sadly I had to give up due to the pandemic and cancellations. I then decided to do the JOGLE thing instead and an Ironman later. So here I am and I’m looking at which Ironman to sign up to. I’m undecided as yet as it depends how long I need to train but I’d prefer something thats a little later on next year. This would also give my husband and I an excuse to go to Mallorca on holiday (“to train”); something we are both more than happy to do. A complete hardship obviously.

The recent drop in lbs and increase in muscle has given me a bit of a power kick and I find I’m hiking and cycling faster. I could probably run faster too but I tend not to bother so its hard to say. Following all the long distance running training I’ve done I’ve developed a bit of a slow jogging habit thats hard to change. It’s just such a nice thing to do.

I’ll probably have to do some faster training though if I want to do an Ironman. I will admit that I would no longer want to just ‘get around’ before the cut off. I would want to do my absolute best, the top time that I’m personally capable of. No idea what that would be yet but we will see.

My husband and I (gosh that sounds kind of royal doesn’t it) have recently done quite a bit of hiking which has been lovely. We’ve also been out on the mountain and road bikes together. Weirdly I find myself sailing ahead when we hike yet lagging behind when we run. I can keep up or even move ahead at times on a mountain bike (except on technical terrain) and yet find myself eating his dust on a road bike. What is all that about? So my goals have to be, to just keep up with him when I run and road bike. That’s not a competitive thing, it would just be a good indicator for me that I’m improving. I’d also like to get better at low level technical stuff on the mountain bike. That’s just because I really love it and it would give me access to more routes.