Life's What You Make It

I seem to have (re)discovered a real zest for life at the moment. A lot of good things are happening and there are plenty of opportunities to be made the most of. This isn't meant to be a brag, just a reflection of my excitable nature.

First off I'm absolutely psyched to announce that I passed my Level 3 Programming & Coaching assessment! That means I am qualified (on paper) to be a personal trainer. Now while I am thrilled, to have been told I passed, my bounciness was tempered by some of the very constructive feedback I got. The basics are there but there are still areas that I can improve on... as with all things. So as my friend Brendon was my "client", heard all the feedback and still wants to continue to work with me I get to practice all of these things and become a better PT. I still have 5 modules of my diploma to complete, the next of which is Nutrition for Sport & Exercise and starts today.

The night before my assessment, in order to take my mind off of things, I went to see Sean Conway giving a talk in Farnham. Sean is an "endurance adventurer" and you may know him for his LEJOG swim last year. I'm a bit of a fan and although I've followed his adventures, it was wonderful to hear him talk about them and to get to ask a few questions. He's running JOGLE in August/September and will be inviting people to join him so with any luck my trip to Cornwall in September will coincide with that. He's also planning to round off his "global triathlon" by running the length of Africa next year and there's talk of setting up an Adventure Academy in the future, which frankly sounds amazing.

Earlier in the week I'd been so enthused by my first metafit class that I decided I needed to make this a regular thing in my life. The only class I could fit in this week was a 6:30am one. Now I'm hopeless, absolutely hopeless, at running in the morning; however any other form of exercise seems to be entirely agreeable so with BoxBellFit being only 10 minutes away I decided this was a reasonable thing to attempt. This was helped by being childishly excited about a brand new pair of training shoes.

Anna greeted me by name (how does she do it?!) as soon as I walked in the door and handed my my brand new membership keyfob to scan in with. Soon 10 bleary-eyed and lycra-clad people stood around the edge of the training area and banging out squat jumps and burpees to some thumping dubstep. Never thought I'd class that as a great way to start the day but life's full of surprises. I'm still impressed with Anna's coaching. She just seems to instinctively know how much more you have to give and what to say to get it out of you. I almost like it when she corrects me because I know she's actually paying attention to what everyone's doing. By 7:45am I was sat at my desk, showered, in possession of a frothy coffee and breakfast with a huge smile and a buzzy feeling.

This felt like the breakfast of kings after class

That wasn't the only early morning adventure I had this week. Last year, much to my mother's dismay, I celebrated the summer solstice by doing a microadventure. This year I had planned to do another, this time with a friend. It didn't go quite to plan, as I'll explain in another post, but it did mean I got to have breakfast at my local lake on Sunday morning, which was really quite glorious.

To round the weekend off I took myself to watch my local team play cricket. By the end of the game I still wasn't sure of the rules, the score or, indeed, who was on my team, but it was a gloriously lazy way to enjoy a sunny Sunday afternoon. Cornetto and fancy lemonade optional.