Enthusiasm, Agonising and Decisions

My first Friday round up of the New Year and there was me thinking I'd not have much to write about... how wrong I was!

Misty morning run

I've hit all my training sessions in the last seven days which amounts to 27.5 miles worth of running, 12 miles on the bike and some strength exercises as well as my first swimming lesson. I'll have a separate post about that next week so stay tuned if you want to know how I'm getting on (hint: I've not drowned). I've been managing to eat more healthily too and feeling rather virtuous for it. I got Hugh F-W's Light and Easy cookbook for Christmas and I've been making a few things from there already. The rhubarb and orange smoothie is a particular favourite and I found another recipe for apple and cashew pudding to stem the dessert cravings (pictured below).

I'm about half way through the reading material for my Exercise Referral module, the last one in my diploma, and getting more nervous by the minute. There's so much to learn! I'm going to need a second pass at some of the more technical chapters but I have until the end of February to do so. Before then though I'll be attending a metafit instructor course in London with a view to being able to teach classes in the not to distant future. I love attending these classes at BoxBellFit so I'm pretty psyched!

That enthusiasm has bubbled over into my race diary. No I *haven't* booked any more events recently but there was a call for everyone in Team Bear to update the team calendar with the events they're doing this year. I'm up to date on that but I was having a browse to see if there were any I could support at and I started to get a serious case of Fear Of Missing Out. But I stopped and thought for a moment... why? I'm doing some big events this year, I'm doing at least one that another team member is taking part in, so what was it? I finally realised that I'd seen a lot of chat about a couple of events where the team were entering en masse and I really wanted to be part of that, and I think I found a solution but I'll save that for another post.

Post run glow

Speaking of events I've been agonising over whether to go ahead and do Tough Guy since Alex announced that she was pulling out (well it is 4 days before her wedding). My reasons for wanting to do it:
- to prove I can
- to face my fears
- to not look weak
- because I said I would
- to raise money for charity

My reasons for not wanting to do it:
- not having anyone else to do it with and hating OCRs on my own
- fear of hypothermia
- being nowhere near where I need to be strength wise
- wanting to do it with Alex because she's the one that talked me into it originally
- wanting to support Alex in the event when we *do* do it together (I ain't doing it twice)

But I finally decided to postpone to a future event and it's somewhat of a relief. In fact that's what we're both going to do, although which future event is yet to be decided. I still have Brighton Marathon as part of my fundraising and I'm confident I'll hit my target with that.

So that's the first week of the year. If this one's anything to go by it's going to be a corker of a year! How's your first week been? Would you have made the same decision about Tough Guy?