A Month to change your life

When I last wrote I had just got the good news that I was moving out of London, up north, in order to cut down my commute, cut down my living costs, and generally gain a better work/life balance.

During this month I’ve found a new place to live, finished my old job, moved all of my stuff, and about to start my new job. It’s been a hectic time.

I’ve also been trying to stay active, whilst fighting off apathy brought about from my exhaustive previous lifestyle.

Also during this transition month I’ve run three races – Toughest, Red Bull Steeple Chase and Judgement Day 6K. All were super fun. I actually surprised myself during the steeple chase too, as I managed to get to the third checkpoint, and I ended up in 46th Position. It was a brutally hot day, and I scored well by owning the downhills.

This month also saw me attempting to walk the Welsh 3000 with some friends, but it did not go exactly to plan, and so the Welsh 3000 and me have unfinished business. Still, it was fab to have some relaxing time away in Wales.

My CrossFit training has been pretty non-existent. One of the issues with working so far from home (my commute was 1.25 hours each way), is that if I stayed late at work, then I’d miss the CrossFit sessions because it also takes over an hour to get to the gym. And because I had a LOT of stuff to sort out before I went, I felt it necessary to focus on that rather than my training.

One thing I didn’t tell many people though, is that I’ve been interning at my CrossFit gym, and coaching the late evening session once a week. So I’ve been doing that for the last 4 weeks, and when no one turns up to the class, I decided to do workouts by myself.

One of the solo workouts I did was CrossFit work out 15.5. This is: 27, 21, 15, 9 reps of Calorie row and Thrusters at 25kg. I’ve done it twice before and I thought it would give me a good feel for where I stood at the moment if I did it again. Well, I can tell you that my strength sucks right now, as does my general fitness. My time went up by 4 minutes. I’ll admit, doing a workout on your own when you’re feeling pretty low about yourself isn’t the best place to push yourself. So I naturally took more breaks than usual, but I’m still glad I did it, and it gives me so much motivation to get back into things properly now I’ve finally got time!

It’s just one of those things. I’ve not been training, I weigh 5 kg heavier, and when I’m depressed I punish myself by not being nice to me in small ways. I often can’t be bothered to drink a glass of water when I’m thirsty because I just can’t be bothered to. Or I’ll not bother taking vitamins because what’s the point right now? Or I’ll skip that class because I’m not feeling it. But despite all of this I KNEW that these feelings would soon be gone, and I passed all this negativity off as stress related. There really is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Horn sounding

I now live 10 mins from work and 3 mins from the gym!

I’m so excited about this.

I’m gaining two and a half hours of my life back every.single.day!

I’ve got time to cook properly again!

If I work even an hour overtime at work, I can still make the classes!

I’ll have time to get to Open Gym and work on what I want to work on! (This is so important if you have specific goals you want to work on, and as you can imagine, I have many).

I have a plan to get me back up to scratch in no time, and it starts with a free PT session with my new CrossFit gym. Watch this space.

If you want to find out what I do to get me back in to the groove, follow me here, week by week, and see what I get up to with my training.

For daily flashes, visit my FB page www.facebook.com/emilyredMQ