Making use of a lunchbreak

I generally feel better at work if I manage to get away from my desk at lunchtime and have a walk in the fresh air. Very, very occasionally I've had a lunchtime run, but I'm not always great at running at that time of day, and I often feel quite anxious because of the time ticking away. You have to fit getting changed, having a run, then getting showered and dressed, into the time - and some days that time window is shorter than others - in my place, a lunch hour isn't always an hour long! However, I didn't get to the gym this morning, after getting a late night, so I decided I would do something short but with 'bang for the buck' at lunchtime. Hill sprints.

There aren't that many hills near my office, and the ones I could think of seemed to be a little too far away, such that when you time the run there and back, there's not a lot of time left for the actual reps. So I found a cycle-path ramp with a decent incline near the office (half a mile away) - ran there, then did roughly 26/27 seconds sprint uphill, 35-40secs slow jog back down, for 4 reps, then 1 minute complete rest, then repeat the 4 reps, then because my heart rate was up around 197 bpm, I figured another set of 4 would possibly kill me (maybe), so instead I went for a not-quite-1 mile jog back to the office. 2 miles total, and the 8 sprints were done at an average running pace of 9:47 min/mile, so that’s not too bad a lunchtime workout, and one I can build on by picking a bigger hill that’s further away next time. It just feels good to have done "something", and it meant I came back to the office a bit more refreshed and focussed for the afternoon - albeit still rosy-cheeked for quite a while!!!

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It's funny the weird places you start to see progress, when you start losing a large amount of weight. I realised after Thursday's weigh-in that I was 'officially' no longer obese, if you give any credence to the BMI scale, as my BMI had fallen just under 30, so I'm now overweight - as daft as it sounds, that's quite a buzz. I don't really have much time for the BMI scale in general, but it still feels like a nice milestone. Which is daft, because I keep hitting number milestones every week (I set a lot of them, for that reason) - but that's how it is. Clothes are also significantly changing. I can get into clothes I've not been able to wear for years, sometimes 'ever' since I optimistically bought them when I was bigger. As good as it is to see my shape changing, and the clothes I can wear change, it's kind of... expected, if that makes sense. Like, the numbers on the scale are going down, so of course my clothes fit differently, if that doesn't sound a bit blasé. This morning, though, walking to work in the sunshine, I snapped a quick selfie and realised my prescription sunglasses that I've had for 2 or 3 years were clearly chosen when my face was fuller. They just looked really weird... My face is obviously getting narrower, and the thought of my glasses no longer 'fitting' astounds me.

Like I say, there are definitely weird places I'm noticing my progress. I move my watch strap up to the next hole, as my wrist gets smaller. I run up the 2 flights of stairs to my flat. I walk to work and back each day, when the car was previously my 'go to' transportation choice. And at work yesterday someone mentioned that I've stopped being the same whingey, miserable, bitchy colleague they're used to. Progress comes in many places, and being able to see it, and acknowledge it, is something I'm learning to do better each day. If I want to keep this year going the way it's started, I still have a lot of work to do, but every day I'm noticing something different to the day before, and you really can't complain about that. x x