The Grim Reavers Are Born

My last post was about my desire to wear skates and injure myself in an attempt at getting fit. Well, we had our very first training session last night and it was Ah-maze-zing . . . after a wobbly start I surprised myself with an actual ability to skate. I think lots of the other ladies that turned up thought the same thing. Super proud of everyone involved. See, sometimes I have an idea and it becomes a fully functioning reality that other people want to take part in too. We now have a team logo, courtesy of a very awesome lady named Penny, I’m thinking team tattoos already seen as Penny is a tattooist too. Talking of tattoos, my latest addition is this beauty at the base of my neck between my shoulder blades . . .

A small reward for reaching my last weight loss goal and continuing to lose weight.

I’ve lost 1lb this week which is fantastic considering it was my birthday week. I also went for a 3 mile run on Friday, the first time I’ve run for nearly 3 weeks. It felt good to be out running but again the weather is really putting me off this exercise, plus roller skating is much more fun.

In celebration of the launch of the Grim Reavers, you can get 10% off your order at my online store using the code ‘Reavers’ . . . this offer ends on 9th December 2012.

As ever keep up to date with us on Twitter by following the #LittlerFairies or #GrimReavers tags

Ease Into 5K – Week 3

We did it, we completed Week 3 . . . it is not getting easier and we have looked ahead at next week’s running schedule and scared ourselves.  Personally, I think Lisa might be dragging me home or calling for an ambulance or adopting my kids and organising me a nice funeral with a bio-degradable coffin. Not that I’m ready to admit defeat, just yet. I shall run and I shall complete the week safe in the knowledge that I’ll be freaking out again about Week 5’s schedule.

To be fair, I never thought I’d be able to run for 1 minute, now I’ve managed to run for longer than that, with my run pace being around 10:50 min/mile or about 5mph, which I think is quite impressive for me. I do love these apps that do all this calculating stuff for you.

Another fun little feature on the ‘Ease into 5K’ app is the journal entries. After each run you get your stats filled in by the app, like Distance; Calories Burned; Average Pace; Duration of run; Run Pace and Walk Pace . . . then you get to enter how you feel about your run, I, bizarrely, have mainly smiley faces for my runs. You can make little notes too. Let’s see how my notes have changed over the last 3 weeks.

Week1, Day1 – Hooray, I did it!

Week1, Day3 – Not as bad as I thought!

Week2, Day 1 – Eurgh!!!!

Week2, Day3 – Hurtie shins and knees, but not too bad!

Week3, Day1 – My knee really hurts, but my run pace is faster!

Week3, Day3 – Do not like!!!

So, going on my quick notes straight after my run, I’m kind of enjoying it more than hating it. I think my last note was due to that run being after I’d been up all night with my sons and the beginning of my cold emerging.  This is how I am rationalising how bad I felt afterwards. In an ideal world, I’d get up after my full quota of sleep, go for a run and come home to a peaceful house . . . the reality is insanity, chaos, demanding children, hardly any sleep . . . and then dragging my ass out of the house to run like I am still managing to be a super fit mum to 3 demons delightful children.

Oh and I managed to lose 1lb this week, which is fantastic seen as I have been a bit forgetful with my calorie tracking. I have been concentrating on ‘strength’ training at the gym instead of ‘cardio’ work which is making my gym sessions much more enjoyable and very hilarious. I found a machine that looked like a torture contraption at the gym on Thursday, so being the inquisitive person that I am, I made the gym lady show me how it worked . . . the funniest best abdominal exercise on this machine was the Cable Crunch. The lady on the video is obviously less prone to the giggles than myself and Nikki were when we did this exercise.

As always keep up to date with our fitness endeavours and join in yourself over on Twitter by following the #LittlerFairies tag.

Ease Into 5K – Week 2

Yep, I totally see myself with . . . er, I mean looking like Daniel Craig when I exercise, except with boobs and more kind of feminine and without a gun, because carrying a gun and running probably isn’t a good idea. In reality, I probably look like the other guy, in a girlie way and more upright than crawling . . . I don’t crawl when I’m drunk, I’m certainly not crawling after a wee bit of running.

We started Week 2 on Monday, with an evening run down to the beach. We actually surprised ourselves with how much further our routine took us and swallowed about a gazillion of those little flies . . . My Fitness Pal doesn’t have a calorie option for flies so I figured they didn’t count.

Tuesday I went out and purchased some actual running shoes and the sales assistant didn’t even laugh at me or ask if I was joking. I must have given him the ‘I am deadly serious about running’ look.

I then totally ruined my ‘serious runner’ persona by excitedly adding these awesome sweat bands to my pile of ‘serious fitness wear’. I forgot to take them to my circuit training on Wednesday, but I did wear them to racquet sports on Thursday. For the record . . . I can play badminton very well, I am, however, very, very, very bad at Squash.

This week saw me lose another 2lb, slowly but steadily the weight is coming off. Admittedly, I know I have lost inches as my clothes are fitting better already. It also saw us run different routes, which were a bit boring. Today we ran around our local park, which I don’t want to do again because after about 3 laps we ran out of different routes to take *is a very small park*

My legs have ached a lot this week. I’ve even uttered the ‘no pain, no gain’ phrase a couple of times to myself . . . usually whilst climbing the two sets of stairs to bed, but I am determined to complete this training, lose weight and get fit.

We are on track for participating in The Poppy Run and running it all, well most of it. Let’s hope Week 3 doesn’t put us off our mission. Check on our progress by following the #LittleFairies tag.

Ease Into 5K – Week 1

There is absolutely, definitely a completely appropriate angle to take with this post, I shall, however, be heading down the ‘can you possibly get into shape using your mobile phone’ road. Over the years and various incarnations of the delightful iPhone, I think I’ve installed quite a few ‘get fit’ apps, used them for about a week, got bored, gone in search of the next ‘free’ be less fat app . . . and repeat . . . until now. I am proud to announce that myself and Lisa not only paid for an app but we have actually completed Week 1 of the Ease into 5K app by @bluefinapp, and will be continuing to use this as our main training aid for the 5K Poppy Run in October *note – we now have a ticker tape countdown for The Poppy Run. Exciting*

The blurb:

What is the Ease into 5K running plan?

Ease into 5K is a beginner’s running plan created by Bluefin Software, LLC.

It is designed for people who are just taking up running

• You alternate between walking and running until you build strength
• It is an 8 week long plan
• You workout 3 times a week, ideally with breaks between days
• Each workout session is from 25-40 minutes long (including a 3 minute warm up and a 5 minute cool down)

For example: Week 1 Day 1: Welcome to your first workout. Start with a 5 minute warm-up then repeat 3 times the following intervals:

• Run 30 seconds
• Walk 45 seconds
• Run 45 seconds
• Walk 60 seconds
• Run 60 seconds
• Walk 90 seconds

Cool-down with a 5 minute walk.

Week 2 has you running a bit more than walking and so on for a total of 8 weeks. The goal is to get you running 30 minutes straight, roughly 5K.

There, doesn’t that sound amazingly easy . . . well, it kind of was, sort of, well, I didn’t pass out or need resuscitating so that was good. We’ve planned to do our runs on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  I have my STEPS gym sessions on a Wednesday and a Thursday *twiddles thumbs*  so I just need to find some form of punishing exercise regime for Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday . . . app based of course.

Carrying on the app based health and fitness, using the free My Fitness Pal app I’ve been tracking my daily intake of calories *not as bad as I thought it might be* and using it to track the calories I burn being all active and stuff. I also use it to track my weight loss, which is a not too shoddy 2lb for this first week. Next up on my increasing list of these ‘get fit’ apps is the Body Tracker app, this paid for app (69p) lets you enter all your measurements, including weight and body fat percentage, add a photo and have multiple users, for family members that wish to keep track of their decreasing measurements too. I’ve only just started using this app so I can’t say how I’ll find it until I fill in my next lot of measurements

I can’t finish this post without mentioning the NHS Smokefree app, mine is currently at 108 days 22 hrs and 35 mins . . . will be more now. I check it occasionally to remind myself how far I have come and that if I give in, it’ll take me another 108 days to get back to this point.

Join in with our Fitness journey on Twitter using the #LittlerFairies tag and let us know about your favourite ‘get fit’ apps.