Slow start.

 

My plan for today was to get up at six and do so stretching before tackling all the jobs I have been putting off for the last two week. Unfortunately when the alarm went off I really wasn't feeling it so decided to have another couple of hours in bed. Given that I probably won't get the chance of a lie in for another six weeks it was probably the right idea.

When I finally got up all the little jobs I had planned quickly turned into big job. Getting the old fridge out of the garage and into the car should have been simple but with the garage and the drive cluttered up it became a real struggle. By the time I had got the car loaded up for the tip my wife and come up with a long list of things that needed picking up from the shop so a thirty minute job soon became a two hour job.

My second job of the day was to fit a new lock on the front door. The old lock had been playing up for a while and I really didn't want to find myself stuck outside when it is freezing cold.  Having sourced a lock on the Internet with lots of spare keys I thought swapping it with old one would be easy. On my first attempt I manged to lock myself in the house and only got the door open by going out of the backdoor and through the garage so i could rely on brute force to open it. 

I then thought I'd finally cracked it but when I put the key in the lock it wouldn't turn. I realised that the fitting for the old lock was slightly smaller than the fitting which came with the new lock, so I had to remove the old fitting and put the new fitting into the door frame. Again this should have been easy but the screws holding it in place had been there for years so they took and awful lot of moving. When I finally thought I had cracked it I tried to shut the door but it simply wouldn't shut.  Having relied heavily on the breathing techniques I've picked up in my Yoga and Body Balance classes I finally lost my patience and reached for the big hammer to try and create a few extra millimetres. After a couple of forceful blows the metal bent just enough to get the door to close.  By the time I had packed away all the tools and tidied up it was almost time for my daily visit to the gym.

Today's challenge was grouping spinning. The class was only thirty minutes long so I thought it would be a doddle. But it certainly wasn't 30minutes of high intensity cycling in a small room filled with sweaty people was hard going. I certainly would not have survived for an hour. Despite being hard work I really enjoyed it and it certainly gave me some ideas to try on my bike in the garage. I think I need to invest in some disco lights and some CDs with a fast beat. In the past I've often cycled for an hour in the morning when it has been too cold to win but in future I might try 30 minutes of high intensity cycling rather than 60 minutes of steady cycling.

Tomorrow I'm planning a 'Parkrun sandwich.' A 2Km warm up, a 5km Parkrun and a 3km cool down. 

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