All posts tagged: #fitness

No excuses launch-pad day

Published by

No one was more surprised than me when I took up running a few months after baby number 2 was born. I was never…sporty, and spent many a P.E. lesson at school hiding in the loos. Don’t get me wrong, I have the co-ordination of a constipated in-bred labradoodle and will never break any speed records – I’m not a PROPER runner. But I’ve loved the personal satisfaction that has come from running half marathons, and *really* enjoyed the personal satisfaction of swigging wine from a drink bottle post-run in a hotel hot pool with a girlfriend on a running trip we did together. This year, I set myself the lofty goal of running a full marathon. Then life got in the way and I haven’t run for months and months because I’ve been full of excuses: “I’m tired because the kids have been up coughing all night, my running top smells funny, I’m getting used to my new job, the weather is shit, there’s just no time, does my thyroid look especially large to …

It’s first place or nothing

Published by

So while I was stoked to still be standing upright, Amy cried actual tears over me not winning the Auckland half marathon on Sunday. The fact that I was never, ever going to come even remotely close to winning, and my (fleeting) joy at improving on last year’s time meant nothing to her. I gave her my participant’s medal as a jollying-up tactic, but she held it sadly and asked, “well who DID win?” I invented a quick story about a runner named Jonathan winning, who’d run lots of races (because I DON’T KNOW). She thought about it for a while, then morosely looked out the window and muttered, “well, I hope Jonathan got an actual trophy, and not just the same medal that you and all the other people who didn’t win got given”. Gee thanks, “Jonathan”, and the thousands of other runners who drank less wine, trained harder and ran faster…thus causing me to bring non-winning shame upon my family.