Weigh ins and weekends

Morning, morning, morning!!

How's it all going, comrades?

Good?


I hope so!


Weigh in this morning, and I'm down a lb. It's not much, especially since I put on half a lb last week, but on the upside it does take me (just, by the skin of my teeth) into the 12 stone bracket. Oh yes, I have finally, officially, made it below 13 stone.

Yaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!


I'm a little bit sad it wasn't more this week, but the scales have just been very slow to move anywhere. In fact, until this morning, I wasn't sure they were going to move at all, so I'll take what I can get!

Also rather pleasing is the fact that I couldn't find any clean pairs of suze 16 work trousers this morning, so I had to resort to the size 14's that have been hung on my wardrobe for the past couple of weeks, and they pretty much fit. Whoop!


So what have I been up to since we last spoke?

Well, I spent Friday night with my friends Bridget, Tim and Jo enjoying a very relaxed night in. We played a bit of Guitar Hero and chatted a lot, and it was generally nice and chilled out.

Saturday day was also nice and easy ... I slept in and then pottered into town to get a wedding card and have a little browse of the shops. What was nice, was this was the first time I've felt comfortable enough to walk into and around town since my back went again, without being worried that I'd put myself in a lot of pain. Baby steps, but steps none the less.

Sat evening was the wedding of my friends Dan and Emma, and it was a gorgeous evening. They got married at a beautiful barn conversion in the country-side, and when we turned up for the evening it was all softly lit with fairly lights and looked stunning. It was a great evening, and Emma and Dan just looked so happy that it was utterly infectious. The evning passed in a blur of friends, celebrating and dancing. Even better - it wasn't a complete killer points-wise as I'd eaten lightly during the day and decided not to drink for the event. I ended up with 1 and a half (I split the second one with Sid) rolls from the hog roast (soooo tastey!) and a slice of wedding cake, and then I went and danced for over an hour, so it was guilt free too. I haven't seen any photos from the evening yet, but I'll put some up here when I do.

After my late night on Sat, I just had a really long, lazy lie-in yesterday before getting up and pottering around the flat. I had circuits yesterday afternoon and they are definitely starting to ramp up the effort required now. I found the first couple of sessions relatively non-taxing, even with injuries, but yesterday's definitely required some effort.

They'd got it layed out with two circuits down each side of the studio, set up in pairs of antagonistic exercises (so bicep curls followed by tricep dips - that kind of thing) focusing on legs, arms, abs and upper body, and then two cardio zones at either end of the gym. So my circuit was 15 mins spinning, then 8 stations - first 4 for 60 secs work, 60 secs rest, then repeat for 45 secs work, 45 secs rest, then 15 mins rowing on the ergos, and the 4 stations on the other side of the room for 2 sets. By the end of the session my heart rate monitor was saying 145 bpm average over the hour, maxed out at 181 (which I happen to know was on the rower). Oh, and I've got some achey triceps today!

After circuits, I headed back round to Bridget's for more chilling out. I was a bit cheeky, as she'd been baking all afternoon, so I subsitituted a proper tea for two pieces of cake. Perhaps not the most balanced way to do WW's but it seems to have worked. Plus, I'm not too worried as I had an extra healthy lunch of baked salmon fillet, wholewheat couscous and loads of green veggies yesterday.

So, that was my weekend, and I'm back to work today .... booooooooooo! The next week is going to be interesting as I've had to redo my points quiz on WW's and have now lost another point - eeek!! Tonight I'm heading spinning, and then for more physio afterwards. Hopefully, that will clear up a few more aches and pains! Fingers crossed.

A weekend of excess ....

Phew - it's been a good weekend (mostly), but I honestly feel like I have consumed way too much. Too much food. Too much drink. Too much sun.

Friday afternoon I shot off from work to go mountain biking. I was going to post some photos up here of how glorious the trail looked, but unfortuately, they're currently stuck on my phone and I can't download them. I rocked up to the centre to find it really quiet, which was how I wanted it, but I still felt a bit nervous about going out on my own. Of the few other people there, they all seemed to be the usual guys who know exactly what they're doing with their bikes, competent and kitted out to the nth degree. I didn't mess around, just put my bike together and got out of the trail away from anyone seeing me doing something stupid. Actually once I was on the trail I barely saw a soul. They'd been logging in the area recently, and where this had crossed the trail it was sometimes really hard to actually work out where it went as it because practically invisible, but away from those mercifully short sections, it was generally in pretty good condition. Certainly better than the last time I was here, when it was a foot deep in mud!

I started to race round the first circuit, and soon realised that I'm not yet as fit as I think I am! The climbs were really taking it out of me - legs and lungs burning, and not helped when my chain was occasionally jumping which threw me off my rhythm. Once I slowed my pace a bit, I found it easier, and stated to enjoy the downhills and all the drops, jumps and turns. After about 45 mins, I tore out the end of the trail feeling pretty chuffed and stopped at the car. Checking the time, I debated quickly whether I had the time and energy left to try for a second circuit, and so headed back into the woods again.

The second attempt started better as my pace was steadier, and I had the advantage of the trail being fresh in my memory this time which helped to pick out the lines to take. However, it quickly became apparent the skipping chain on the first lap wasn't a one off, and the problem started snow-balling as the chain started jumping off completely or coming slack and sticking with alarming regularity. I persevered for a bit longer, before jumping off to inspect it properly, and finally realised that part of the chain guard (a piece of plastic that I never bothered to strip off when I first got the bike) has snapped and jammed between the wheel and the rear cassette, preventing the wheel from spinning freely. Not the best thing having a bike that can't freewheel properly when you're out on singletrack that deliberately goes up and down hill.

Since I didn't have any tools with me, or anyway to fix the problem, I limped on a bit further on the bike, until I got a section that would be absolutlely impassable with the bike in it's current condition (i.e. everytime I went downhill and freewheeled to any extent, the chain pulled slack, and I'd then have to put in 3 or 4 full turns of the pedals to pull it taut again before I could actually put any power in with the pedals). At this point I was close enough to the end of the trail to decide to risk using one of the wide open logging trails to try and run paralell to the trail and find my way back to the centre. 5 mins later I made it back to the car grumpy, but relieved, and with just enough time left to grab a shower and shoot off to meet the girls for dinner.

Dinner was lovely but, my god, it was rich! Couldn't finish all of either my main or dessert, despite the fact that I was absolutely starving when I got there. It was great seeing the girls though and catching up on the going's on at my ex-work. Made it home about midnight and collapsed into bed.

Yesterday I was up bright and early at 7 for the wedding. For once I was out on the road on time and over with Jo and Lissa in plenty of time to get changed and get some make-up on before we left for the church. It was a beautiful day, both in terms of the weather and the service and reception. The bride looked ravishing, the speeches were emotional and the venues were lovely.

The food was pretty good, if not the best for someone on WW's, but I think it was the free-flowing champagne and wine that was the killer. Because I wasn't pointing, having worked quite hard all week to earn my day off, I paid no attention at all to what I was drinking, and since I've been drinking far less anyway since the start of the year, suffice it to say that it all got the better of me, and I was quite ill when we finally made it home, before passing out in bed. I'm pretty embarrassed by that, although at least I didn't do anything stupid at the wedding itself.

All in all we had a glorious day:

The picture at the very top of this post was taken just after Jo had flashed her pants at me for some unknown reason - hence my slightly traumatised expression!!!

Weigh in's tomorrow morning, and right now I feel like a total heifer, so I will be extremely surprised if I've lost anything this week. Guess I'll just have to get my head down and concentrate next week. The one nice thing I have taken away from this week though is that my confidence in myself is definitely on the rise. I had lots of nice compliments yesterday, and I now just casually accept them and thank the giver of them. I also noticed that I didn't have any moments yesterday when I felt self-conscious (well, apart from when I started to feel very drunk and didn't want to do anything stupid lol), and Lissa commented this morning that I seemed much more self-assured, especially larking around in front of the cameras.

Anyway - I'm exhausted so I'm going to head for bed now. The final test will be tomorrow when I climb on the scales - I will report in tomorrow.