CHRISTMAS

My Gruffalo

I'm calm..so far

We LOVE Lego & Bananagram

2011

This was playing on my iPod the other morning whilst I was on my turbo trainer. This really sums up 2011 for me with regards to what is happening in the world right now. Seems like we are a little fractured right now. Can 2012 be a more positive year, I hope so.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

In my opinion, Christmas seemed to take slightly too long to show up in this neck of the woods this year. The children broke up exceptionally early this year, hence I had mad, excited boys thinking each day they would wake up to "Christmas".

Right so thinking caps on - lots of activities to get organised to keep them busy.

Didn't do too badly as we had a party on the Monday with friends and their children, lots of crafty bits for the children to do/make as well as a village hall to run around in. Yep that worked.

Another activity we returned to this holiday was Geocaching. Thanks to www.helemill.com I am now the proud owner of a Geomate Jnr, a robust, colourful GPS device with geocaches pre-loaded onto it. You literally turn it on once outside and it locates your nearest cache. If you have never tried it you must, it is great fun, although I have to say that finding the cache is the ultimate goal as was our failure on several occasions previously. Now, that has all changed thanks to my new gadget.

Myself, 2 friends and the children all went to try out my new toy. We have a cache located only 1/2 a mile away, this was our destination that afternoon. We took ourselves down the country lane, over the fields and up a hill to locate it to the very metre. There it was, my PRECIOUS!! I have failed on each of the 4 attempts I have taken previously with geocaching so this was not only a major triumph for me but it helped to instill confidence in the children that we could indeed find our treasure and not endure another fruitless trek across fields and such like. Hoorah!!

The Chalk House and the bouldering wall was another fantastic choice. Both boys have been once before and really enjoyed it. JT gets so much out of it, it is very much a drop in gym where you can come and go in that day once you have paid your initial entrance fee. There is always someone there who can navigate the boys through some new moves to challenge their climbing hence JT comes away feeling his self esteem particularly inflated. You can almost see his puffed out chest, bless him!

The cinema was also another destination of choice on a particularly wet and windy day, Alvin & the Chipmunks - Chipwrecked was the film. Not the most high brow of movies but I have to say it meant I could sit down, eat popcorn and not endure 90 mins of my kids teasing each other. I regard this then as a mission accomplished.

Another feat with which I struggle is getting my running in when Mr T is still at work and I have the children home. It either means an early start or an evening run. Luckily I managed both this week, one great, wet 6 mile run with the running club and an early morning one with Mrs D www.thedaytodavis.co.uk. In our morning run we ran over the fields in order to locate the geocache again as Mrs D loves her mud runs and our usual route only takes us on roads, I was able to impart my precise knowledge of the location of the cache for Mrs D - I could see she was impressed!!!

All in all not bad really for a week where the boys were intolerably excited, had that time to let it bubble and manifest and unleash it on their mother!!

I hope you are all enjoying the Christmas break and in the words of Jerry Springer take care of yourself and each other :)

JANATHON 2012

Well I've only gone and done it now haven't I? I have registered for my first ever Janathon! www.janathon.com. Run every day, blog every day is what greets you on the home page. It looks like 2012 is going to be the year of new challenges for me. First a daily blogging and tracking of a run EACH day ( or some other form of exercise) then a marathon in May. Being 40 next year is not looking at all bad from where I am sitting.

I am addicted to a fan of twitter and through this vast vessel of social media I have come into contact with an enormous running community. Through this I have heard about Janathon via @jogblog aka Cathy on twitter and as it is becoming ever more difficult to haul my sorry state out of bed in the mornings to complete what used to be a regular early morning run, I have given myself a challenge of running each day as well as blogging and tracking those miles.

Another tweep @Rob_Herron has been kind enough to send me some free samples of High 5 Zero Electrolyte tablets, a fantastic chance for me to try out some new forms of nutrition especially as I am now going to be upping the mileage with my long runs. So thank you Rob, check out this link for a selection of supplements available http://www.musclefinesse.com/shop/category/Women-Supplements/78/browse



Looks like that is January all sewn up for me then, should also schedule some time in for the husband and kids or you might just find them running around with me!!!

SATURDAY RUN - A LITTLE INTERRUPTED!!!

You know when you have a plan and you get underway to accomplishing what you intended? It feels right and good. Then suddenly this little devil on your shoulder tells you to abandon all those plans to take yourself back home and miss that run this morning. Welcome to my morning.
Instead of running straight from home this morning I decided to mix it up abit and drive a short way into Bude to start my run, taking in the canal, coast path, beach and country roads. I had been getting somewhat tired of the same routes of late and needed the change as my mileage is increasing and I needed that extra motivation as my Mrs Motivator was not along for the ride today www.daytodavis.co.uk.
No longer than 5 mins into my drive in did the devil start it's pestering. It started to rain and that gave it ammunition to work on. I very nearly turned the van around to make my way home. I then remembered where this was all going to lead me - to the marathon that I so desperately needed to get under my belt and to how I really wanted to challenge myself to get there. Also to those who believed in me and to those that I wanted to raise money for, I owed it not only to myself but to all those not to give up today.

Now to get the record straight I don't normally get this problem, once dressed and route planned I never deviate, so today's little blip was most disconcerting. Got to my destination and started out, felt good, met various other runners around the first 3 miles along the canal, a great flat route to start to proceedings, then a climb into Upton to take me onto the coast path over to the Pepper Pot. The tide was out this morning enabling me to run across the beach ( amazingly good for those core muscles), up the steps by the sea pool, then across to meet Maer Lane.
At this point I was feeling good, then like a bolt out of the blue that little devil appeared and decided that I should cut my run short - what the.....? I took myself off for a few minutes, had to have a little word with myself. My plan was to get 9 miles in and that was what I was going to complete.
With that little episode dealt with, off I went. The rest of the run was completed with no interruptions and was sheer joy. Saw several club members out and about enjoying the dry, crisp morning. Saw my sister and my niece leaving the swimming pool, stopped for a quick chat before descending a wonderful hill where I let me legs just go as fast as they wanted - weeeeeeeeee!!!!! Think Phoebe from friends style!!!

Back home and feeling great but wondering why the interruptions this morning? There are no reasons to explain them as I want to do this and am enjoying having a long term plan to work towards. I guess it is all part of challenging me to listen to my body and not always my head. My body really WANTED this run and it seems my mind was not in the same place this morning. Has anyone else suffered this imbalance of the physical and the psychological?
Lets hope that's the last I see of that devil for a while anyway.

BIKE LOVE

Today I re-established my relationship with my bike via cupid - aka the turbo trainer. We had been seeing each other on a fairly regular basis until around a month ago when I got my head turned, once again, by the running.
I will always be a runner first & foremost. It's where I am at home, it's what's lifts me, empowers me and keeps me sane emotionally, physically and mentally balanced.

The weather was a tad windy here today so a ride outside would have meant utter confidence in my riding and those on the road with me - hence the decision to go inside. I do like training on the TT as I can plug myself into my music and get an hour's session done with no boredom factor involved. As I rarely take my music on a run with me these days, it is a chance for me to appreciate my amazing varied musical tastes.

As I was cooling down on the bike, spinning my legs this came on my iPod. Just a perfect song.



STARDUST

You ever get that feeling when you are reading a fantastically amazing book, when you want to wiggle your nose ( Bewitched style) and jump into the book? I thought so. I found I wanted to do this whilst reading Stardust by Neil Gaiman recently. It was a very magical, enchanting read.
Imagine my excitement when scouting the charity shops in Cardiff ( more on that trip to come) when I happened upon the DVD of Stardust - or was it www.thedaytodavis.co.uk who found it for me in there? Needless to say I am the proud owner of a copy of the dvd with Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro and Sienna Miller in it to name but a few. I had promised the boys I would sit down with them last night and watch it. I had been raving about the book so much JT was sooo very excited at seeing the movie.

We had a wonderful roast meal whilst the heavens opened outside, the wind was picking up and the temperature outside was starting to take a more seasonal turn. PJ's were the order of the evening as we set up the movie, all snuggled on the sofa.
All too often the film version of great books are somewhat disappointing but Stardust was in no way in that category. It was a most beautiful tale told with an amazing cast, true cross-generational film magic. JT was transfixed for the 2hr 5 min and I was enjoying having "jumped" into the book all over again.
JT was being taken to school this morning by http://www.ayres-rocks.blogspot.com/ who by all accounts might as well have watched the movie now as well. According to Mrs A, JT re-told the story of Stardust to her on the journey to school, didn't stop talking about it. Do you get the impression he liked it as much as his mum???!!! As soon as it had finished he wanted to see it again!

Winter evenings are made for moments like these. It's starting to feel a lot more like Xmas in the Trewin household now, thanks to a little sprinkling of stardust x