Hectic Week

This week has been a bit manic - and it will probably continue well into the weekend.  It's my kid's last week at school and there are all kinds of evening activities, followed by last minute sporting activities, followed by school camp at the very end of the week.  So, in addition to my normal very hectic life, I have to remember a multitude of things - ensuring my kids are where they need to be, when they need to be, wearing what they need to be - to top it all off, I am NOT an organised person, so times like this are a great challenge!

Tonight was the school open evening - my daughter had a ballet performance and my son (and his classmates) acted out the story of Exodus (abridged, thankfully!).  I had planned to do one of my Jillian Michaels DVD's when I got back, but it was late, so having done a quick 20 minute walk at lunchtime, I decided that would suffice and today would act as a rest day.

The Marathon Weight Loss challenge started with a thud as I managed to lose a whole half a pound last week!!!  Ugh!  I hate it when you literally bust your butt with exercise and your body rewards you with such a small loss.  But I suppose it's still a loss, so I should be grateful for that!  The plus side of the challenge is that I've gained loads of friends on My Fitness Pal!  If I haven't mentioned this previously, apologies, because it truly is an invaluable tool on my weight loss journey!  I use the iPhone app - but you can easily just use the web (www.myfitnesspal.com).  I love it because it is one of the most comprehensive collections of calories available - and you can always use their barcode scanner for foods that might not appear on their database.

I have used this app from the very beginning to track my daily calories and exercise.  One of my favourite features is the recipes tab - if you're like me and cook a lot of your food from scratch, then this feature is invaluable!  Basically, you enter all of the ingredients to a particular food, or meal add the number of people it serves and hey presto - it tells you the calories per serving!  If anyone reading this would like to add me as a friend on My Fitness Pal, my username is: pilliepop (appreciate this sounds a wee bit strange!  It was a silly word that my daughter made up when she was about three - we thought it was so cute that it sort of stuck!).

Very apt this week!

The 5K training is going well and I'm definitely feeling that my stamina for running continues to improve.  This week my training consists of a 5 minute warm up walk followed by 7 sets of 1.5 minutes running, 1 minute walking, then a 5 minute cool down walk.  As I finish this programme about half a mile from home, I have started running that last half a mile (slowing to a walk when necessary), but I think this added extra is really helping increase my fitness.  Last night I only stopped running briefly for about 1 minute when I had a really bad stitch in my side - as soon as I got my breath I started running again.  I'm hoping that this cheeky little add-on at the end will magically progress me on the programme!  We shall see!  I have looked ahead in the programme and I must admit the forthcoming weeks are making me feel VERY nervous!  I'm really hoping that my body can cope with this!!

Well, I shall close for now.  I hope everyone has a good rest of the week and please pray that I manage to get the right kid to the right place on time :-)