The best inspiration is not to outdo others, but to outdo ourselves

I have been training, it's just been very busy and there hasn't been time left to talk about it as well as doing it. Today, however, not so much. I'm off work feeling sorry for myself and have spent the day glued to the sofa. Hopefully it'll sort me out and I'll be raring to go again tomorrow. Sounds like a good plan.

Today I managed to get my training done despite minor levels of chaos. I have been up since half three this morning as Ryan was prodigiously sick all over his bedroom - lovely. I spent two hours sorting that out and figured I may as well just get on with my day, and the several extra loads of washing engendered by the aforementioned event - yuk! So it was with some pleasure that I climbed onto my training bike, a welcome respite from the beginning of the day.

It's a funny thing, but when I make out a training schedule, I regularly think that I've put the sessions in the only places they will really fit in the week. Then, when it comes to it and things don't quite go to plan, I find I can shuffle things around all over the place. This week has been a lot like that, with a fair amount of shuffling and re-jigging to get things to fit. However, somehow or another I have succeeded in doing so. Family stuff, work stuff, general home stuff and the training have somehow all been shoehorned into the available waking hours!

It has been really, really cold the last few mornings. You will probably think I'm nuts, but I think it makes it lovely to be out there running, especially early when it's still quiet. It's been beautiful, both yesterday and today. Very cold, very crisp and decidedly sparkly! Either a full on white frost that sparkles wherever the light catches it, or a dusting over the darker patches that has it's own sparkles that seem to dance and change as you move by and change the shadows.

I'm glad that I managed to get a bit of a rest before the weekend began. It has been rather manic, I had a vast amount of work to do, mountains of washing and quite a bit of training to fit in too. Mind you, I've about done now and the curry's on order, so it ends well!

Anyway, going back a bit. I didn't do a great deal on Thursday, mainly due to an afternoon meeting. However, I did manage to get four miles of running in before work. So, at least I'd done something.

The last couple of days have been very heavy on the biking, well, on the indoor trainer. Today, should have been a longish session, but yesterday was too. Ryan's not been very well and has been off school yesterday and sent home from school today. So this necessitated a shuffle of the schedule so that I could still train. Yesterday morning I did 50 minutes on the bike before work. I had been planning to run in the afternoon, but took Ryan to the nurse instead, and so returned to the bike later in the day once all of that was sorted out.

I ran this morning, that's about all that can be said for it. I should have felt good on account of having had 2 rest days over the weekend - well, 2 days without training at least. However, that wasn't the case. I felt really tired and I felt the effects of having eaten a bit too much over the weekend. The result of all this being that I felt like I was dragging a ton weight around with me. Oh well, it was a good idea to get myself moving again and I did feel better for having done so.

This will just be a quick resume of what happened on those two days. Mind you, there isn't a vast amount to report anyway. Thursday morning wasn't a training session, it was getting planning done and taking Daniel to the train station. However, I did do a little later on. I did a half hour swim after work. I really had to talk myself into it, I'm not feeling greatly enthused about my swimming at the moment.

It's been a heavy day in a few different ways today, beginning with the fact that I felt far too heavy this morning. Mind you, I did eat too much yesterday, I had lunch at Pizza Hut with Ryan, but still ate a proper meal in the evening with Daniel, and not a small one either. So I felt a bit like I was lugging a lump of lead around with me this morning as I chugged through my 4 mile run. Mind you, the wind and rain didn't help much either.

I did an hour on my indoor training bike this morning. This is a much harder proposition than it used to be. The engineer came out to it during the holidays, it had been making a dreadful racket and needed some attention - sadly it still needs some, but that's another story. Anyway, he altered something to do with the magnets that control the resistance and it now feels the same on level 10 that it used to be for level 18! So you can imagine what it feels like by the time I get up to 18. An hour requires rather more effort than it did do previously.