New Year, New Goals, Same Me…..

2020, well here we are!  I always thought I was born into the wrong decade.  Love the pazazz of the 20’s – the music the style and just the general vibe of it.  And now here we are – in our very own roaring 20’s!  I say we bring back the flapper dresses, the jazz music and everything else that was so fabulous about the era….

Anyway,  apart from my love of the decade, I decided this year, I was going to keep up the work on myself and show myself some love by setting a little challenge, to get back out onto the road and complete a 10k run.  My reasoning behind this was spurred on after a walk I went on at the end of last summer with 2 of my friends up in Glendalough.  We try every year to get up there and do the Spinc, but last year, oh god – I struggled to get through it.  It was not an enjoyable walk for me at all.  I would have thought of myself as quite a fit person but it really hammered home the point to me that there are 2 different types of fit – weight lifting strength & fitness and cardio fitness.  To be honest, I have shyed away from cardio fitness since coming back to the gym after treatment and it really was apparent during that walk that I needed to get my arse in gear and sort that out!  So I went and chatted to Niall in Nikafit and told him what I wanted!  To be able to enjoy the walk this summer!  So he set up a cardio plan for me.  It started with me doing a 1km time trial on the runner and then I would do 10 running sessions, each session varied in speed and number of intervals based on my results from the 1km trial. (If you are reading this and are part of Nikafit Gym and looking to improve your cardio fitness, talk to Niall or any of the coaches about a MAS programme!  Game changer for me!!  If you are not part of Nikafit, why aren’t you??  You are missing out!)  I won’t go into the nitty gritty of the sessions but after those initial 10 session were completed I repeated the 1km time trial, and to see how much I had improved in the space of a month/5 weeks was amazing – I was delighted with myself.  So I am now on the 3rd round of my MAS programme and I decided I was going to kick it up a notch and give road running another go – I wanted to do something this year for myself and this was a big challenge for me.

I am now 2 road runs in and I am already up to 8k – but an enjoyable 8k.  Not a run where I am trying to push myself so hard  to get a certain time which renders it unenjoyable, but a run with a friend where we can go out and catch up and enjoy getting out into nature and appreciating the fact that we can do it!  I am signing up for the VHI Womens Mini Marathon this year again.   Last year I walked the 10k because I would never have been able to run the 5k, let alone the 10k.  But this year I am signing up as a runner and I am going to go out there and enjoy the day and enjoy the run!  It’s a good few months away so lots of time to prepare!  And who knows, maybe if I get through this 10k unscathed, there could be another half marathon in me?!  I did one years and years ago and it scarred me for life but with so many things in life now, I have beaten Cancer, there really isn’t anything else I should be scared of!