RED days 23, 24, 25, 26, 27

 Life has got in the way of updating this week! But that’s part of the challenge. 

Day 23: total body strength workout and a therapy walk with a client. Struggled today as I’ve been having stomach/digestion issues lately and they peaked on this day, culminating in spending some time in the school nurse’s room thinking I was going to be sick. Fun times

Day 24: purposefully chose not to run as a result and met a colleague for a walk. Frizzin. 

Day 25: Upper body workout. Think it might have had some extra ab stuff that I skipped, because obviously who needs that?

Day 26: Leg day. See above for ab stuff. Although PJ kept saying ‘this leg exercise is also really good for your core’ so evidently it’s not needed. Right?

Day 27: I ran! For the first time since day 1. Can’t believe some people are actually doing Run Every Day - i think something would fall off/internally collapse. 

Nearly there. Four days to go! Then PJ starts a Feb RED type of challenge of her own… we’ll see. 

RED days 20, 21, 22

 Three days comes around quickly (it seems)

Day 20: leg day. NGL, I half-arsed this one. Skipped some of the ab exercises to JFDI. But I did also walk from the windscreen replacement place to the supermarket and back (with shopping on the way back - 10 mins there, 13 back!). So that’ll do me. 

Day 21: Bosu balance workout again. Definite improvements in balance, either because I knew what was coming or because I’ve actually improved? You decide (I have no idea)

Day 22: Five minute lake swim but before you go ‘Pfft, that’s no time at all!’ - it was MINUS EIGHT DEGREES outside and a mere 3 degrees in the water. Which is cold cold cold. I was probably in the water for another four minutes or so before I started swimming in order to try and acclimatise - not long enough evidently, as my collar bone area got super cold a minute or so after I set off. Then a bit further on I could feel my toes starting to tingle, so I decided it was time to turn around. They say ‘always get out when you feel like you could have done more’ - maybe I could have done to the first buoy and back, but maybe it wouldn’t have been sensible. There’s always next week. Getting changed after was…interesting. Much swearing. 

RED days 17, 18, 19

 Definitely starting to flag, but then that’s part of what makes it a challenge. 

Day 17: Booty Band cardio. Tuesdays I usually run with a friend (who very kindly significantly slows her pace to mine) but it’s frozen here, so indoors seemed safer. Only 15 minutes but it felt longer, so perhaps a good thing we didn’t run. 

Day 18: Yoga. An earlier start to the day, plus recognising that I needed something more gentle. 

Day 19: Upper body. I’m following PJ’s Patreon calendar (not to the day, but the upper body workout for that week I’ll do on my usual day) to see if that makes a difference. Interestingly her calendar for Feb is basically a RED style challenge so yeah, we’ll see what happens there. 

 RED days 14, 15, 16

Day 14: closest I’ve come to ‘fuck this shit’ - no specific workout/exercise, but I did some housework that did indeed get my heart rate up significantly - climbing onto a stool and the boxed in chest level sections of the bathroom to clean the mould off the ceiling. 

Was it exercise as we know it? Arguably not

Was it moving with intention more than I otherwise would have? Yes

Do I care if it doesn’t count? Nope

Day 15: lake swim. Very different to the last swim (which is one of the things I love about the lake: it’s different every time) as the biting wind made it choppy, to the extent that I got smacked in the face with waves a few times. And it was cooooold getting changed afterwards, to the extent that my toes HURT. Fifth sub-10 degrees swim though, second swim in January (albeit a very mild January so far - I’m not anticipating going this Sunday when the temperature will be 3 degrees, but never say never), and bearing in mind before the heatwave of this summer I never thought I would entertain the idea of going into open water, I’m pretty pleased with that. 

Day 16: total body workout. Another one where halfway through I thought ‘I could happily ditch this altogether’. Kept going though as it was pretty short.  

Also walked 5k later in the day - mixture of an outdoor therapy walk and walking into town. Rewarded myself with a hot chocolate, obviously. 

RED days 11, 12, 13

 I’ve worked three days straight this week (I know! That much!) which has been an adjustment after almost three weeks off work. Added to that, I noticed my anxiety levels rising earlier in the week as I knew my parents were attending an important follow-up medical appointment and I was anticipating a pretty bleak outcome. (Actually it was a lot better than expected, phew.)

Combination of these factors meant I had to push a bit more to get some exercise in. 

Day 11: Upper body workout, FWPJ

Day 12: (biggest ‘nope’ day) - a BOSU ball (or knock-off BOSU if you’re me) balance workout. I chose this thinking that because it was short it would be straightforward and gentle. Hahahahha nope, I was sweating by halfway. 

Day 13: lower body. Usually when I start a workout I lose the ‘meh’ feeling once I get going, but today I was very much in ‘how much longer’ mode. But, it’s done, another three days in the bag and fuck you very much, January. 

RED 8, 9, 10

 Back to work and so it begins… too many tabs in my brain open. 

Day 8 - FWPJ cardio boxing workout. It looked absolutely exhausting in her preview video, but was actually very doable. One to bookmark for a (literally) rainy day.

Day 9 - total body strength workout based on push-pull-hinge-squat. Slightly longer one and my legs are still a bit sore from the leg workout a few days ago - I was stiff again by the evening. 

Day 10 - in my head I was going to go for a run at 7.45, but it was DARK and windy and raining and LEGS and just hella nope. Yoga instead - I started doing a bit of Adriene but ended up finding what feels good and just doing my own thing. And that’s fine…

In other news, I’m trying to plan a party. For me! Lots of tabs open on that one…

RED days 5-7. And stopping doing things

 Slipping already! Which ties in with what I meant to add to the last post - I recently read something about it being ok if you don’t stick with things. Bear with…

… meh can’t find it. Basically, it was along the lines of that it’s perfectly fine to have a hobby, or an activity or whatever and… stop. To not do it forever. Whether you do it for a few days, months or years, it’s absolutely not failure to stop completely, or pause. Circumstances change, life happens, sometimes we’re tired or whatever. It doesn’t mean you wasted your time or shouldn’t have tried, or that you’re a flake who can’t stick to it. Yet somehow we’ve gained the notion that if we don’t do something consistently we’re not doing it properly. And then we feel like since we have failed, we might as well stop altogether, when maybe just doing it sometimes is perfectly good enough. 

Anyway. Day 5: upper body workout

Day 6: Leg day. Body weight only - which was plenty, my lower body is stiff today. Which leads to…

Day 7: yoga for tired legs. 

First week in the bag! Next week is back to work though, so we’ll see what a difference that makes. Also the weather is shit. 

RED January 3 and 4

 Yes, yes, a post every two days is going to be terribly boring, even to myself in posterity, but any longer and I won’t keep it up. It’ll be interesting (I use the term loosely) to see how I fare when I’m back at work. There’s definitely something calming/cathartic about the flow of thoughts-words-fingers-screen - something about the process is almost like magic - you think it and it comes out. As an aside, I’m so glad I taught myself to touch type 30-odd years ago. 

Day 3 - total body workout. I love Fitness With PJ’s workouts - she guides you enough (but not too much), she balances muscle groups and you feel like a superhero doing a chest press or a concentration bicep curl (or possibly a bit like you’re in the prison yard - just me?) with 7 or 8kg dumbbells. When I started, I wasn’t sure it was something I would keep on with - like all of us, I’ve tried various hobbies and types of exercise over the years, and not all of them stick - I’ll come back to this thought, bear with. But I’ve kept it up, and every few months I buy heavier dumbbells (woop! Not sure I’ll progress beyond 8kg any time soon though - not least because it’s just really heavy to hold in my hands). I’m a Patreon member and she sends you a monthly workout calendar. I adapt it as necessary, because I occasionally run and I love love love open water swimming at the moment, but it helps as a guide. 

Day 4 - 45 minute total body yoga stretch. Back to the ubiquitous and reliable Yoga With Adriene. I’ve definitely noticed a reduction in my hip flexibility since I don’t do so much yoga, so I need and want to get back to it. But, hours in the day….

RED January: intro

 So this time last year I exercised every day for 117 days straight (End of Dec - mid April). Some days I might have even done two things (usually the second one would be a walk or something fairly light). 

I don’t have an exercise addiction, and I’m overweight, so arguably it was a healthy thing to do, but it was definitely a coping mechanism. I struggle most years with January and February (even with a SAD lamp and taking extra vitamin D) so this was something that I could control. Most days it wasn’t a struggle, and on the days when it was I would just do 15 minutes of yoga, and just making my body move with intention and purpose usually lifted my spirits. 

Then one day I just stopped. I can’t remember why - I think I was just tired. And that’s fine. 

Lots of charities have done a ‘Run Every Day’ fundraiser in previous years - that was never going to be me. I figure I’m doing quite well if I manage one run a week, and even that is rare these days. However one of the groups I’m in is doing ‘Record Every Day’ for January and as I’m a sucker for a pretty medal I’ve signed up. 

Not every day. Just January. Limits. 

Anyway, as I can’t really remember how it felt last time, I thought I’d record it for my own posterity purposes. 

Jan 1: 3.45k run. I was going to do Parkrun, but I slept badly (I wasn’t at home) and the thought of both running 5k and going somewhere new to do it just didn’t appeal. I prefer to exercise first thing (well after a cup of tea and a ponder) so it’s not often that I manage to exert myself later in the day. But I cajoled a friend into running with me, and chatting en route always helps distract me (that and largely 90s dance music). I got stitch at times, and it was pretty slow, but it counts. Also did a short walk around the block in the afternoon - I was quite glad when it started raining, as my quads were feeing it. Must have helped though, as I wasn’t sore the following day. 

Jan2: 250m? (not sure of the distance actually) lake swim. 6.6 degrees in my ‘blood of the orphans’ Primark wetsuit. They say you should go in slowly to avoid cold water shock, but then on the other hand the longer you are in the water the more you are cooling down….so basically I waited until the ‘WTAF’ feeling of cold in my pelvis dissipated, and then it was ok. It always helps when the sun is shining because it’s such a gorgeous spot. It’s rained so much lately that a) the car park is 90% pot holes and b) it was really slippy underfoot - I felt for the woman who got out after me and just face planted into the mud. Fortunately as it was a soft landing she wasn’t hurt, but she had to go back in to wash the mud off. 

I love it here so much. 

Therapy isn’t without humour... sometimes unintentionally

Before I started my training, it’s fair to say that I was known for being quite... blunt. Not so much in a ‘I speak my mind, me’ way, more of a ‘engaging my mouth before my brain’ type of way. I like to think that now I’ve managed to curb this impulse and/or transform it into something a bit more positive, but now and again it reappears.

Like the time I was with a long-established yet still quite recalcitrant client. I felt that some of their reluctance to open up was from a concern over being perceived wrongly, or judged. I tried to be reassuring.
‘There’s nothing you can say that would make me think any worse of you,’ I said.
Pause.
I twig that it hasn’t quite come out in the way I intended, and could in fact be taken in entirely the opposite way. Fabulous. I start gabbling about how it’s because I actually hold them in really high esteem, not the opposite, but then start laughing at myself and how I’m just digging myself a deeper hole.
Ever the professional.


Actually not my fault (honestly!) but a communication breakdown lead to a very confusing few minutes with a client once where they had meant to join the school council, and had instead made an appointment with us. They were expecting there to be more people there, I’m asking about the family background, we’re both looking at each other weirdly... it took a few minutes for the penny to drop. 

In one of our therapy rooms we have coasters that have blue owls on.
‘Is that the TripAdvisor owl?’
Yes, please leave us a five star review at the end of your therapy. Tell all your friends and family!

Client: I’d like to use the time today to think productively about how prayer can help me.
Me: Ok, let’s talk about that some more. What religion are you?
Client: I’m an atheist.
Me: .....

Trying to keep a professional appearance during some conversations is harder than others, particularly if you’re trying to reduce embarrassment, for example when talking to people about masturbation and sexuality.
Client: Please tell me I’m not the only person you have these sorts of conversations with!
Me: Oh not at all, I talk about sex and relationships and masturbation in sessions on a semi-regular basis.
Thinks: Don’t giggle at the word ‘semi’. DO NOT GIGGLE AT THE WORD SEMI. JUST DON’T...
<giggles>
I’m really sorry, the word ‘semi’ just set me off a bit there.

It broke the ice and enabled a frank discussion in a way that perhaps being serious and grown-up might not have done.