Keeping on, on the Thames Path!

My weekly post is a little later than usual this week, though for good reason. Other Half and I have been raising money for Mind, the mental health charity, by going for a walk along the Thames. Which makes it all sound rather tame, except for the fact that it was a 100km walk (that’s 62.2 miles for those of you that like me, still use old money) and we did it in 21 and a half hours. So no sleep for us – and I figured that it’d be better to create a blog post when I was actually awake!

So this week’s post is really about how I fueled myself to keep going for that distance and over that amount of time. As a conservative estimate (because I’m not sure how heavy my bag was and because there was no option to choose speed on the calories burnt calculator that I used), I used somewhere in the region of 4150 calories. Clearly I was going to need to eat something a bit more substantial than the sticks and leaves the vegans usually eat 😉

Breakfast was really early, so nothing was open to buy anything – I had two packets of instant Moma porridge in almond butter and salted caramel flavour. All you need is a kettle, a mug and a spoon and it’s pretty much my go to breakfast when I’m staying away as it’s miles cheaper than buying breakfast out.

Our event started at 7.10am and by the time we’d got to the first rest stop at Richmond, we were both feeling peckish. The first rest stop was well supplied for vegans – there were several different types of crisps available and some interesting looking cookies as well as fruit. Neither of us could resist the lure of pickled onion Space Invaders crisps – though the 200% increase in price was a surprise – they were 10p when I was at school! We also picked up a bag of Gato nut butter cookies each as well. I went for almond and raspberry and Other Half went for hazelnut and chocolate. We ate those whilst walking to the next stop. Other Half made the better choice – they had a really crumbly texture that worked much better with the chocolate flavouring.

By lunch time, we’d done 28km and arrived at Hurst Park. If you were doing the quarter challenge, you got lunch because that was your finish. Everybody else had to bring their own. Our lunch was our usual walking option: 2 bread rolls with mustard pickle. We’d made them at home and brought them with us, but despite being a day old, they were lovely. I grabbed a banana as well.

The third stop was a bit of a disappointment – they had a big display of pick and mix sweets, none of which was suitable for vegans. We’d brought some pulsin bars with us, so we had one of those each and some more water and then carried on our merry way!

Runnymede, site of the signing of the Magna Carta, was our fourth stop and that meant it was time for dinner! There was one vegan option – a very tasty tomato and bean ratatouille and then you could help yourself to chips, peas and carrots. There was a vegan cake option but you had to ask for it – neither us wanted cake. Having to ask for the vegan option might seem a bit annoying, but actually it means that there will be a vegan option left for the vegans. I’ve lost count of the times that I’ve been at conferences and other events where non-vegans have decided that the vegan option looks great and have eaten it all up!

By about 8.30, we had completed just under a third of the distance and watched a lovely sunset. This was another snack stop and by this time I was craving salt again, so I went for Smiths Salt and Vinegar Chipsticks – another snack fondly remembered from my childhood – and who can forget the advert?

At just before midnight we got the 6th stop, just over 3/4s of the way through. This was a meal stop and there was a vegan option of lentil koftas. Again, neither of us wanted to eat anything big at that time of night, so I opted for the other pulsin bar that I had brought with me. I wasn’t really hungry, but knew that I should eat something to keep me going and it seemed to work quite well.

At our seventh stop around 2am, neither of us ate anything. There were snacks available, but neither of us were particularly hungry and we didn’t really want to hang around in a cold tent either. This turned out to be a big mistake. The last stage was horrendous with a perfect storm of low temperature and poor visibility due to the river fog that had rolled in and made it feel even colder than 3.5 degrees C. We were both very tired and in retrospect I should have grabbed a banana!

We finally rolled into Henley at around 21 and a half hours after we’d started. Neither of us felt like a hot meal and there was cold no vegan option. Having learnt from the South Coast walk we did last year, I’d brought enough porridge with us to have another two sachets each. It tasted great and was lovely and warm. We got the first train that we could back to London and nipped into Leon for more porridge – and I have to say, I was very impressed with the Ruby Red Porridge that they had on offer – warm, fruity, nutty and sustaining. Yum!

So that was how I fueled myself for the equivalent of nearly two and a half marathons. My top tips for vegans intending to do a similar long distance challenge are:

Bring your own snacks – it’s great if the event caters for vegans at every stop, but you know what you like and it’s so much more motivating to know that you have your favourite bar to eat at the next stop, rather than hoping that there might be something suitable left. Plus, if you are concerned about plastic usage, you can make choices that don’t mean using plastic.
Try your snacks out in training – nobody wants an upset stomach 7km from the nearest toilet…
You will eat more than you think you will – take something for between stops just in case you need it. I carried some more Space Invaders with me for that reason (but completely forgot that I had them at 3am!). If you’ve done lots of training, you’ll know when you’re likely to start craving salt for example.
Make sure you eat something at every stop, even if it is just a small piece of fruit. You will get to the point where you stop feeling hungry, but your body is still working really hard and needs the fuel.
Make sure you drink enough water – drink at every rest stop and take water with you too. This is especially important if you need to take NSAIDs like ibuprofen, as they can effect how your kidneys work.
Make sure you do enough long distance training walks (pretty obvious really, but two and a bit marathons is a loooong way)
Bring plenty of plasters for blisters and change your socks every 25km

Despite the physical effort involved, staying up all night and the inevitable aches and pains afterwards, I really enjoy this kind challenge and get a great sense of achievement afterwards. If you’re thinking about it but aren’t sure, just give it a go. You can always retire if you have to!

3 Life lessons that apply to more than just running

Photo by Mateusz Dach on Pexels.com
(Not actually the 2019 Liverpool Marathon!)

Didn’t get a chance to post last weekend, as the long awaited marathon swung around and so I was in Liverpool. Unfortunately, I had injured my knee about a month prior to the event, so I couldn’t do the full thing and had to settle for a half marathon instead. So this post is about what I learnt from the run.

If it’s hurting, work out what the problem is

I’d been going great guns until I got to 18 miles and then I ended up with really bad knee pain. This should have been a cue to slow down. Instead, I did a 20 mile walk across the South Downs the Thursday afterwards. It was a lovely walk, but despite wearing a knee brace it still hurt quite a bit. The next day, I did a 5K run through the water meadows at Winchester and promptly fell over my own two feet. It was bad enough that the person who was walking his dog thought that I had fallen over it, but I landed on the bad knee and cut my hand too. So fast forward two weeks, and it’s still hurting, so I went to see Sports physio. I’ve now got loads of exercises to do to strengthen my legs and that should deal with the knee pain – in 2-3 months time. His advice was not to try to run the marathon, and in a rare bout of common sense, I decided he was right. If I had stopped when the pain started, would I have been able to do the full 26.2 miles? I’ll never know, but I could have saved myself a lot of discomfort if I’d stopped when it hurt and worked out what the problem was. Working out why it’s hurting and doing something about it applies in so many areas of life!

Even if you’re disappointed, give it your best shot and try to avoid being resentful

To say I was disappointed not to be running the marathon that I’d spent 6 months training for was an understatement and I could have let that colour my whole experience. Instead, I mooched over to Liverpool with the attitude that I’d give the half marathon a go and see what happened. I was determined to finish even if it meant walking most of it, and I figured that as I walk quite fast, if I only ran 3 miles, I could still complete in the cut off time. I could have done the half marathon feeling resentful that I wasn’t doing the whole thing, but instead I figured that just finishing it would be an achievement in itself. And it turned out that was quite important in terms of being in the right place mentally towards the second half of the race. With the exception of about a mile where the route turned inland for a short while, the last 6 miles was into a very stiff wind – alright – it was a hellish wind at around 18 mph, straight into my face. Even the seagulls were having trouble. I was just glad to have made it that far without stopping, so I battled on with a positive-I-really-can’t-believe-I’ve-made-it-this-far attitude and finally made it to the end. If I’d chosen to feel bitter, that last stretch of the race would have been horrendous. My other half was able to complete the marathon distance and I was genuinely pleased for him – again that would have been difficult if I was feeling resentful about my own race

Proper preparation is good thing – over preparation not so much

Turns out that training for a marathon and then doing a half is a recipe for a good time – even with an injury. There’s a fine balance between properly preparing and over preparing and I suppose that some might consider training for a marathon and then doing the half over preparing. I’d agree if that had been the original intention – especially as it was the 18 miles that proved too much for my knee. However, from my point of view, I was making the best of a bad job and all those training runs (and hill runs – I’m looking at you Upper Parliament Street) proved to be invaluable. I could have spent ages looking at the map before I did the run, working out where the water stations were, looking for landmarks to give me some idea of how far round I was etc, but that would have been over preparing – and the moment that something went awry (because even the most carefully planned things usually have something unexpected occurring) – I would have been completely thrown. So I winged it, relied on the organisers to put water stations at sensible distances apart and for the mileage signs to be mostly accurate.

And it worked out fine – and I somehow managed to finish in the top 25% for my age class. And then there’s the medal (personally I think I got a better deal than my other half in terms of ribbon colour 😁)

Marathon medal with blue and yellow ribbon, 1/2 marathon with orange and purple ribbon

So I’ve signed up for next year’s run already and fingers crossed that with the exercises I’m doing to strengthen my legs, I might just be able to do the full distance next time!

April update – 2019 resolutions

Montezuma's dark chocolate absolute black egg — An almost entirely plastic packaging free chocolate egg

So I appear to have blinked and before I knew it, it was not only April, but mid April! Where did that go? After another 7 week half term – and the subsequent horrible full -blown cold that has exploded onto the scene – I’ve finally reached the point where I can take stock of the last month (well, six weeks really…)

So has my blog grown and am I sharing lots of ideas? On the whole, I think the answer is yes – I have 24 posts now and they cover a range of topics. I’d still like to post more regularly and I’m getting to a quieter point in the year at work, so hopefully that will happen.

In terms of reducing waste and plastic use, I’m still using my veg box for vegetables which cuts down on a lot of unnecessary plastic and Waitrose have started putting their organic bananas in a home compostable bag. I have several of those in the compost heap now, so we’ll see how the worms like those! I’ve also discovered that Moma porridge now comes in sachets rather than plastic tubs. As I’m looking for a cheap breakfast when I go a way in a few weeks’ time, I’m going to try these and see how many I need to eat to fill me up – either way, plastic pots saved by buying sachets and cash saved by not having to eat out (£2.99 for a box of 5 sachets, compared to Cafe Nero porridge at around £1.60 per pot). The thing that I am most pleased with this month though, is our Montezuma Absolute Black 100% cocoa solids egg. At nearly ten pounds, it’s quite expensive, but not particularly more expensive than other ‘premium’ eggs. The best bit is that it comes with no plastic other than the bag that the buttons are in, so most of the packaging can be recycled and I can re-use the bag for something else.

Marathon training is going well – next week’s long run is 18 miles, so I’ll look forward to that *gulp*. What I have discovered is that just doing anyway is a useful philosophy to keep in the back of my mind when I’m tackling the next distance increase. The thought of running 16 miles last weekend was much worse that the actual running of the 16 miles, so maybe I should bear that in mind when I’m challenged in other areas of my life and just get started! My marathon training has rather taken over any attempts to do long walks in preparation for the 100km walk in late summer, but I am planning to do a 25 mile walk in a couple of weeks’ time, so we’ll see how that goes.

My final resolution was to indulge my love of 80s New Wave and Synth Pop and to see some live bands. We saw Sleeper a few weeks ago, supported by the excellent Lottery Winners, in Leeds. The new album is good – my favourite tune is Blue Like You, and as always seems to be the case when I go to see a band, the support turned out to be really good too. Not New Wave or Synth Pop (that’s later in the year), but definitely live music – and thoroughly enjoyable evening all round.

So at the end of the first quarter of the year, things are moving in the direction that I want them to. As I move through the year, I hope to build on the work that I’ve already done so that I can achieve all of the things that I want to by the end of the year!

Down the Digital Rabbit Hole…

**I bet the White Rabbit never had a data storage problem!**
Image by dassel on Pixabay

I’m currently on a mission to declutter and organise so I can reduce decision fatigue. I make so many decisions everyday, I want to get rid of the superfluous ones, so I’ve tidied up the random drawer, charity shopped knitting patterns that I’m never going to knit and tried the project 333 challenge (which I shall blog about once the three month trial is up), but I haven’t really got to grips with my digital clutter.

The funny thing about digital clutter and disorganisation is that it gets out of hand almost unnoticed. By the time that you spot it, it’s become clutter of epic proportions. If my house was in the mess that my hard drives are in, I’d never be able to open the front door to get out of the house, let alone actually find anything! I have lots of backs up for important pieces of work that I’ve done or am doing – well, I’d hate to lose the USB stick. And what happens if one of the hard drives corrupts or a helpful cat spills a full cup of coffee on the computer? Not that that’s ever happened before… Okay, so I may be a little paranoid, but a friend of mine lost her whole dissertation two days before it was due in…

None of the things that I’ve done or am in the process of doing are anything more than common sense – or as I saw somewhere last week, it’s not rocket surgery – but sometimes a common sense approach is easier to see when someone else points it out to you. Or at least I find that to be the case!

I see double up ahead…*

So with lots of backups to organise, I started by going through all the folders I could find and deleting duplicates. Four hours and sixty thousand files later – seriously! That’s about 4 or 5 duplicates of each file – I copied everything onto a back up drive, so I had a copy of the original files in case I deleted something I actually wanted to keep by accident. Then I started the time consuming task of working out what I actually needed to keep. Some were easy to make decisions about – that series on quilt blocks of the States that I’ve not looked at for the past ten years, for example. I think it’s a fairly safe bet as I haven’t done it in the last ten years, I’m probably not going to make a 52 block quilt this side of eternity. Other choices were much harder. I’ve done loads since 2004, so that copy of my CV is quite out of date, but it does have all the archaeological units that I worked for, with precise dates. I did only need one copy though, so I got rid of the others!

A little organisation at the start = lots of time saved later

At the same time I started to organise files properly into folders which to be honest is something that I could have done from the start and would have saved an awful lot of faffing about later on. Speaking of things I should have done first time around, I also gave everything a proper title rather than new folder, new folder (2) and so on. My personal favourite was a random series of letters and numbers. I had about 7 of the latter. Turns out they were pdfs of newspapers from the 1870s and ’80s that I’d saved when doing some family history research. It took me ages to work out what the relevant bits were, because the newspapers were broadsheets with tiny print…

So my digital declutter continues. Little and often I think, will be the key to success here. After the marathon moving around of files and folders and deleting duplicates, I really can’t face more than an hour or so of sorting. I haven’t even started on the thousands of photos that I’ve taken on my phone yet. So it may take me some considerable time, but I am determined to finish up with an organised filing system containing only relevant and useful files, and to keep my files properly organised moving forward. Wish me luck…

*For those of you who don’t remember the Riverboat Song first time around, check it out here!

2019 Resolutions – March Update

So where did February go? I know it’s a short month, but I seem to have stumbled into March without realising it! So during the 28 days of February, what have I achieved that allows me to work toward this year’s goals?

Well, my blog is growing , slowly but surely! I’ve written on a range of topics from self development themed articles to sustainability to some recipes that I hope you’ve enjoyed (I think my favourite at the moment is the leek and sausage casserole!) I’m still enjoying the process of writing and being creative and it’s a nice escape from my day job.

One of my recent posts was on sustainable dental health, which fits nicely in with my next goal which is to live a more sustainable lifestyle. This month I have also purchased some rather nice pre-loved records rather than buying new physical copies – though I have then also bought the mp3s of the albums where available. I get to listen to great music in a variety of formats, the records don’t end up in landfill and the artist still gets some royalties – everyone’s happy (and I think I may be writing a second hand music post at some point in the near future)! As I type, I am thoroughly enjoying listening to Kraftwerk’s Man Machine (yes, I know I’m 40 odd years behind everyone else!) I love the random things that you find in record sleeves sometimes. My recent purchase of Now 8 resulted in a brilliant find of an offer for an “Exclusive limited edition warm sweatshirt”, available in Chinese Jade or Electric Blue for the princely sum of £19.99 plus p&p. As the offer closed on the 28th February 1987, I think I’m somewhat late for that, though according to this inflation calculator, the £19.99 that sweater cost in 1987 is now approximately £55.76. Ouch!

My third goal was to complete a marathon within the cut off time. I’m not aiming big, I’m just aiming! My training is continuing will be doing 12 miles this week – but still not enjoying the interval training or the hill running. Hopefully I’ll be able to persuade myself to come to like it – or at least dislike it less! I also entered my first race. Other half and I went for the Winchester 10K, partly because we like Winchester and partly because it was far enough away when we were contemplating entering a race that we thought it might be a realistic proposition that we could actually complete it. I wouldn’t say that my other half and I are competitive, but we crossed the finish line at the same time because we were determined not be beaten by each other…

My quest to see some good live music continues – I’m just having to be very patient as most of the gigs are at the back end of the year. I am going to see Sleeper at the end of the month though and shall thoroughly enjoy reliving the ’90s. Just not in fancy dress…

Last month my sustainable living goal was dental health – this month I shall be focusing on cruelty free and sustainable cosmetics and DIY bath alternatives. Experimenting will be fun, but I’d best get my skates on as we’re five days into March already!

Three lessons I learnt from doing my first 10K race

The noise of many pairs of tramping feet is strangely loud in the foggy morning and then a magnificent figure holding aloft a sword looms large out of the mist. He has a large shield leaning against his legs and everyone present knows that it is Alfred, King of the Britons.

But we’re not in 9th century Wessex…this is modern day Winchester and the start of this year’s Winchester 10K road race! This year’s event took place on the 24th February and with the fog made for a particularly chilly start. It was my first competitive race and I was pleased with my time, but more important than a personal best was the experience of actually running the race itself. This got me to thinking about what I’d learnt from the experience…

1.Train properly

As with so much in life, it pays to be properly prepared. Much as I hate hill running (and I really do!), I do appreciate why it’s important – and that training paid off in buckets last week. The area around Winchester is quite hilly, particularly the Arlesford road which is a long incline. I was glad that my running programme meant that I had spent some considerable time running up and down the same hill over and over again near where I live. Exciting, huh? But that hard graft in training meant that the event itself went much more smoothly than I had expected and I was able to keep up a fast pace for the whole race. Which brings me to my second point…

2. Be prepared to push yourself outside of your comfort zone…

…because you really are quite likely to surprise yourself! I run in the early morning, partly because I like the solitude and partly because I don’t want have to deal with other people faffing about. I discovered that running success in a large organised race such as this one is as much about navigating around other people as it is about the actual running. The fact that this was my first race and that I was running in a large crowd made me feel quite discombobulated! But I’d expected to feel slightly uncomfortable, and my desire to experience a formal race before I ran a marathon outweighed the temporary sense of muddle and confusion. For me, running this race was about allaying greater anxiety further down the line, so that’s what I concentrated on – and I think this can be applied to lots of different areas of life. Finding a compelling reason to push through the initial discomfort is a really strong motivator. And you are quite likely to surprise yourself once you start – by the time I was 5K into the race (and pleasantly surprised that I was still feeling quite fresh) – I was starting to relax and enjoy it!

3. Don’t over-prepare

Preparation is good. Obsessing about an event, not so much. I could have spent an awful lot of time looking at every detail of the course. The route had been published before the event, so I could have used Google Earth to have a look at the area. If I’d done that, I would have spotted the hills and there is a fair chance that I’d have decided that it was too difficult and chickened out. Instead, I just concentrated on my marathon training and treated it like a normal run – I knew I could do 10K, as I’d done 10 miles the week before. Once your basic plan is in place, there is usually little to be gained by continual scrutiny, except perhaps anxiety and that helps nobody!

So all in all, the Winchester 10K was a learning experience in more ways than one – and I got a rather nice medal and running shirt out of it too! And I enjoyed it so much that I shall be back next year to try to improve on my time…

Three Things I Learnt About Myself by Doing a Mini ‘Digital Detox’

A laptop with email open and a mobile phone on the desk — Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

If you search for ‘digital detox’ on Google, you’ll get about 78,700,000 results, a fair number of which are advertising ‘Digital Detox’ breaks. Which just goes to show what a big thing disconnecting from your devices is at the moment. But this is hardly surprising when research suggests that the longer you spend in front of a screen and away from nature, the more likely you are to be depressed and lacking in altruism and empathy, ie the more likely you are to be socially isolated. We live in a world where not using technology isn’t an option for most of us, so we have to find a way to balance technology use and ‘real life’. Outside of my job, which involves using a computer for 4-6 hours a day, I’m not a big user of digital devices (and I certainly don’t check my phone 200 times a day!) However, I have noticed that I have been spending rather a lot of time in front of screens recently, so I thought I’d do a mini digital detox and go digital device free for a day and see what happened.

The rules I set myself were fairly simple – go cold turkey and don’t turn on my computer or phone and therefore, don’t look at any digital stuff for the day. I allowed myself to take my phone out of the house when I went out on the off-chance that the car broke down and then I could turn my mobile on and phone the breakdown service.

So first thing to say is that I had intended to do this last weekend, but my parents were on holiday for the weekend, so I wanted to be contactable if I needed to be. In retrospect, I could have just relied on the landline (yes, we still have one!), as it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if I’d not been contactable for an hour or two – but equally, I didn’t want them to worry that they couldn’t contact me. So I earmarked this weekend for my mini-digital detox.

I did it on Saturday rather than Sunday, because my long run is on a Sunday at the moment and I wanted to be able to work out how far I’d been and to listen to music to spur me on – so my multitasking phone was a necessity, though obviously I don’t look at my screen whilst running.

Lots of clock faces all telling different times — Photo by Andrey Grushnikov on Pexels.com

So how did I fare? Well, the first issue I found was that I had to rely on clocks to tell the time. I don’t bother with a watch anymore, because I have a phone… This wasn’t a problem at home as there are clocks in every room except the bathroom. But what I did notice is that there are few working clocks in public places anymore. I guess when they get to the end of their useful lives they’re either removed or just left, frozen in time forever…

I had no problems with the planning of my shopping for the week in terms of what to eat – I have a collection of recipes books and recipes that I have torn out of newspapers and magazines, so inspiration for using up the stuff I had left in the fridge and the pantry wasn’t a problem. There were two complications, however. Knowing what was in the veg box for the coming week (and therefore planning the second half of the week) was the first, whilst being able to compare prices between supermarkets was the other. The veg box problem was easily solved because when I realised last week that I was going to be computer free this Saturday, I took a note of what was due in the box (let’s hope the contents haven’t changed!). I didn’t find a solution to the other problem – which supermarket is cheapest for red lentils and pumpkin seeds… I could have physically gone to several different supermarkets, but as some are in town and others out of town, but that would have taken up a considerable amount of time on Saturday that I didn’t have, so I just had to guess.

One of the things that I needed to do this weekend was to get some bias binding for a quilt that has seen better days, which I’m going to turn into toppers for some wicker storage crates that I have under the bed. I had considered donating the quilt to a charity shop but the quilt top is faded, the material is quite thin and the filling is bunched in places, so it’s being re-purposed at home (check back later for a post about the finished item). So when measuring up the crate to work out how much bias binding I needed to go around the edge of the quilt, I had to calculate the amount on paper. And check it twice, just in case. And then add on another 20cm. A minor frustration, but using my phone would have been quicker.

I like to listen to music when I’m doing other things. That was more complicated than normal because I was limited to either a) being in the same room as the radio or b) being in the same room as the record player. With option a), I obviously had no control over what I was listening to and with option b) I was limited to my physical music collection. I don’t often buy physical releases of music anymore (although I did buy a CD of OMD’s Navigation a couple of months back because it was cheaper to buy the CD and get the digital download free than it was to buy the digital download on its own. Go figure.) so I have less choice than if I am listening on my phone. Having said that, I do enjoy listening to records because it forces me to be more mindful about what I am doing – one side of a 12″ album doesn’t last very long and you have to physically turn the record over.

Close up of a record player with record — Photo by Francesco Paggiaro on Pexels.com

What else did I discover? Well, just ‘Googling that’ was clearly impossible. So all those questions my curious nature wants to ask had to wait until today to for an answer – and by that time I’d forgotten what I’d wanted to know. In terms of mental clutter, it clearly wasn’t that important to know!

I’m not a big user of social media, nor do I have those annoying push notification things on my phone, but I do use it. When I did turn my phone on this morning, I discovered rather more notifications than I thought I’d get and lots of stuff in my feeds. So whilst it wasn’t overwhelming, sifting through for relevant stuff took more time than I wanted it to. The same held true for email as well and was doubly frustrating because I’d let it slip for the last week and so had lots of stuff to deal with.

So what did I learn about myself from my mini-detox and did it have any positive effects?

First thing I learnt was that I need to be organised if I am going to make this a regular thing. I need to sort out my shopping list the day before which will allow me to both check my veg box contents and compare prices if necessary.

I don’t have to use a multi-tasking product when I have other bits of technology that single-task around the house which I could use rather than use my phone and then get distracted from my original purpose – I do have a calculator from my school days somewhere, so I should try to find that. If I had a wrist watch, I’d have much less reason to look at my phone, so I’ll look into that (it has to be waterproof because I have lost count of the number of watches I have ruined by leaving them on my wrist when doing the washing up or getting in the shower).

The instantly connected culture we live in isn’t that great for me in terms of cluttering up my life with information that is of variable relevance. Turns out that the questions that I’d normally rely on Google to answer were of such fleeting importance that I can’t even remember what they were today! And as for social media and email, it did illustrate the need to prune the accounts that I am following and the things that I am subscribed to – that’ll be this week’s challenge. Music wasn’t really an issue – I’m just used to being able to listen to whatever I want, whenever I want. I don’t really need to listen to music in the bath – I could read a book instead – and I could re-acquaint myself with some of the neglected tunes in my physical music collection. Playing those songs again will bring back many happy memories, so I’m looking forward to that already!

So would I do it again? I can’t say as I noticed any difference in my sleep quality (not having been exposed to blue light all day), but I did notice that I was forced to slow down and be more mindful about what I was going to do, how and when, so yes, I am going to be tech free for at least one day every fortnight… I’m off to ferret out my much-loved copy of Pulp’s Different Class!

2019 Resolutions – February Update

So in my Happy New Year post, I shared some resolutions that I intend to achieve by the end of the year. Now seems like a good time for an update (it’ll keep me accountable!)

So first up – Grow my blog and share lots of ideas with you. So far I have managed to post at least once a week, so in that sense it’s working. I’m not going to pretend that it isn’t a slog to write something that other people (hopefully!) find interesting, but I’m persevering and enjoying the process of being creative

Review of Temple Coffee
Red Cabbage Hash
Acheulean handaxes at the Ashmolean

Continue to find ways to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Well, I’ve kept up with the organic veg box. I’m using Abel and Cole’s British Veg Box, so am feeling doubly virtuous. I’m enjoying the root veg and leafy greens and have discovered and am loving kalettes which are a cross between Brussel sprouts and kale. Who knew such a thing existed?! And I’m enjoying the winter sunshine in the form of blood oranges – transported by sea, not by air and so double virtue points again!

Two blood oranges nestled in the snow. One sliced in half to reveal the segments — Lovely, bright blood oranges!
(Photo Pixabay ID 148854)

My Other Half commented the other week on how much waste for the compost bin we are producing now, so I think I’ve probably reduced the amount of packaging that we’re using because the veg comes in a cardboard box and we’re filling up on fruit and veg rather than processed food.

I’ve made myself a new bag for work and shopping which I’ll post about soon, but my quest for the elusive eco toothbrush continues – OH has no problem with the humble brush, but I seem to splay the bristles after about a week. I’m going to try the brushes on &keep and see if they are any better – and as I am ordering a tooth brush, I will try their tooth powder as well, as the jars are recyclable, unlike toothpaste tubes. I’ll let you know how I got on next month.

Complete a marathon within the cut off time – I’ve entered a marathon in May, so training has started. I was running 15 miles a week, which isn’t a bad place to start – though it was a series of steady 3 mile runs, culminating in a 10K at the weekend. Now I’ve added in interval training and hill training. I’m hopeful that I might come to enjoy those types of run in the near future (because otherwise the next four months are going to be a very long time!). To keep me motivated, I’ve entered a 10K at the end of this month, so I’m really looking forward to that.

Some people running a road race through an unidentified city — A generic marathon photo 🙂
(Photo by Mateusz Dach on Pexels.com)

Indulge my love of 80s new wave and synth pop and see some live bands – I have tickets to see A-ha, one of my favourite bands at the end of the year and am also going to see some tribute bands in April, so that’s going quite well! I’m eagerly awaiting news of OMDs 2019 tour (and obviously saving hard for it too, so that I can actually afford to go!)

So all in all, I feel like I’m on track at the moment. But the process of doing this has got me thinking – perhaps I need to set up more steps for my goals. Probably not for goal four, and goal three already has a training plan (so I’ve removed decision fatigue there by using No Meat Athlete’s training plan) but definitely for goal 2. I need an aspect to focus on each month – so February is going to be dental health month – which will mean that my smile will be perfect for World Oral Health Month in March and National Smile Month in May!

Happy 2019!

It’s the first day of the new year – hope yours has started well.

I’m not big on setting goals at the start of the year, but I do have four things I’d like to achieve this year

Grow my blog and share lots of ideas with you
Continue my quest to live a more sustainable life. I’m looking at ways to reduce waste generally, but especially my use of plastic
Complete a marathon within the cut off time of 6 hours and beat my personal best for a nonstop 100km walk
Indulge my love of 80s new wave/synth pop and see some live bands – – well – all work and no play… 🙂

They’re all SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound – everybody loves a SMART target…), perhaps with the exception of number 2 – though if I have managed to reduce my use of plastic by December 2019, I’ll know I have achieved it…

So I’ll share my progress with you throughout the year and we’ll see how it goes!

Hope you have a fab year and achieve the things that you want to.