Quilt...

Well, the exercise has been taking a bit of a back seat these last three weeks or so, which is pretty shocking.  Never going to lose the next stone if I don't get back to it, so will be back at the pool tomorrow, snow willing!  Well, that's a bit of a hope really, because although it's snowing quite heavily now, it's unlikely to get so bad as to stop me getting to the pool tomorrow, this is Edinburgh, not London!  I did try and go swimming this week, but was hampered by the queueing system at the Uni pool - they only let 30 people in at any one time, so if you go at a busy time you have to wait.  The queue was too long that I decided to try again another time.  Monday's are particularly bad apparently, so I'll just go back to my usual pool tomorrow.  

I do love the snow though - I am like a small child, getting all giggly and excited by it.  Was very jealous of all the snow down south.  I live in Scotland surely it's supposed to be worse here! 

Anyway, what I have been doing in the meantime, while not exercising, is starting work on my quilt.  I bought the fabric in the middle of last year to make a patchwork quilt and it has taken me this long to finally get round to doing anything about it.  The fact that I had to cut nearly 200 pieces out was probably a big factor putting me off...  It's an Amy Butler design and is her 'brick path' quilt from her fabulous free patterns she puts on her website (www.amybutlerdesign.com).  As well as liking the look of the finished design it appealed because I thought the structure would be easy for someone who has never made a quilt before and who is still getting to know her sewing machine.  I picked some fairly muted colours for the quilt, mostly creams with some goldy colours, but just to make it a bit more interesting there are some really nice reds in there too.  

It took me several weeks to cut all the rectangles out (mostly because it was as tedious as I had imagined it to be and back breaking stuff), but it was a fairly impressive stack of bits when I was done... 

That's them all stacked up after I undertook the mammoth task of laying them all out on the floor to work out where they should go.  As there were, I think, 7 different fabrics and the quilt is 11 rows by 18, it was important not to get two of the same piece of fabric next to each other, and also to make sure that it has an element of the eclectic about it, so that it doesn't follow too much of a prescribed pattern.  I'm very lucky that our living room has a big floorspace so I could undertake the laying out exercise being able to see the full quilt and get a sense of what the finished piece will look like:

It's a big old quilt being roughly double bed sized (it should be 72" by 72" when finished).  I pretty pleased with how it looked laid out on the floor (it took several hours to complete that).  Here's a close up of some of the fabric:

I'm particularly fond of the bits with birds on (you probably can't appreciate them in the picture), but love all the fabrics and how well it will go with whatever bed linen I put on the spare bed.  Our spare room is also the fiance's study, so anything to make it less of a work space when we have visitors is a big bonus!

I completed the laying out stage two weeks ago and now am on to the sewing stage!  I have so far completed the sewing up of the first 9 downward rows, sewing the short ends in each row together, creating 9 long strings of fabric.  I'll not sew the downward rows together until I've finished them all, but it's nice to see it starting to come together already.  Very excited to see the finished thing!

Update

Was at the doctor on Friday morning, who was singularly unhelpful. Not my usual GP and not sure I'd want to see her again. I was expecting at least: maybe it's a virus; if not: you need to get better sleep, here are some leaflets; but instead I got: maybe you've been overdoing it, everyone gets a bit sluggish every now and again! Goddamn her. I felt like she wasn't taking me seriously at all. I was a little overwrought with the whole thing, it having been a pretty big deal for me to go to the doctor about it, having been kept waiting 30 mins for my appointment and still being tired, that I'm afraid to say I did blub a bit in her surgery. When asked if there was anything worrying me, I nearly snorted: yes, this!

Anyway, I think she felt guilty because now she's agreed to do some tests, just to rule a few things out. I'm to go back for blood tests next week, so we'll see what happens. I'm feeling much better this week, so maybe whatever was working on me has worked it's way out, but I'll feel more re-assured after the tests.

On the upside, I had a lovely weekend away in Perthshire with my five best pals. We had a lovely relaxing time chez Wastrel and SAM, with good food, wine and company. A delicious fondue and champagne awaited us when we arrived, which started the weekend perfectly. I was also able to give SAM her belated birthday present and another apology at missing last week’s fun. Saturday was spent getting up leisurely, then heading out to a spot of historical interest nearby, only to find that it was shut for Winter. Blooming Scotland. Someone joked that that should be on the posters that greet you at the airport: Welcome to Scotland, Closed until April. Brilliant. But we spent a good amount of time wandering around the graveyard looking at the unusual names of the local deceased, before heading to the local pub across the road. This was quite a find as the food was really nice pub grub. I had haddock and chips. The fish was really tasty and the batter nice and light. You got a fish and a half and initially I thought I couldn't eat it all, but that turned out to be a foolish thought - of course I could! Although in the end I was prevented by a blasted migraine. Thankfully I had my Sumatriptan tablets with me and was able to stave it off to just a mild headache, but it was annoying none the less. I had really wanted to finish that fish!

Back at the house Wastrel gave me a much appreciated massage (she is a qualified therapeutic massage person), which was both relaxing and soothing for my head. Meant I slept well that night too. Thanks so much!! We played a game designed by the multi-talented Wastrel for HMcM's Christmas a few years back, and then ate delicious roast lamb with trimmings. Hmmm... lamb, one of my favourite meats. Yum. Oh, followed by Sticky Toffee Pud. Delicious. Possibly not so good for the old diet all this fine dining, but you need to indulge every now and again or your life just gets too dull.

Sunday was again a leisurely start, culminating in lunch in Perth at this lovely little French place (you'll notice names escaping me totally today), which did just delicious food. I had a 'salad' (ha!) Paysanne. More potato and bacon than lettuce, but that was the point. ;o) HL and I then hightailed it off to the station for the train back to Edinburgh leaving RF, Wastrel and SAM with the Perth shops. Well, the ones that were open. It wasn't a bad journey back to Edinburgh, even though the train was quite busy, and HL and I had a good chat about life and plans and our boys. It really was a lovely weekend but it was good to be home on Sunday evening. Even better that my dearest had made the flat look immaculate, having done a great job cleaning and tidying after having had his friends over on Saturday. The challenge now is to keep it that way! Ha!

Bad week(s)

After that good start it's all gone downhill in the last two weeks.  At the beginning of last week I started feeling really tired, lethargic, exhausted even, my concentration at work started to wain and I even started feeling a little lightheaded every now and again.  I refer to it as being post-viral because that's all I can compare it to, but I've not had a virus lately (that I know of!)  :o(  I can't explain it very well, but it's been very annoying.

It's meant as well as not feeling able to exercise, I've missed SAM's 30th birthday (which I was quite upset about, I was just going for drinks, but was still looking forward to seeing her on her birthday), I've been going to bed really early as I'm feeling so tired,  and I missed my Japanese class last night.  I slept for nearly 12 hours on Saturday night, not uninterrupted, but even so.

I haven't necessarily been sleeping very well, as I am a borderline insomniac at times, so it's probably linked to that.  But I have obviously been on the internet and have considered several other options - you should never let a hypochondriac near the internet!

By the way, I'm not the traditional sort of insomniac.  I get to sleep ok, I wake once or twice a night, and get back to sleep again reasonably ok, but the quality of sleep I get when I sleep is not good.  

Anyway, this has carried on in to this week, albeit a little less than last week, so I've booked myself a doctors appointment.  We'll see what they have to say - I expect not very much.  I've also been off the last two days from work as I was sick yesterday, so no doubt the doctor will think it was some kind of virus...  

Hopefully it's just been a short term thing and I'm already feeling better today - perhaps I'm actually allergic to work!  

Keeping up with intentions

Pretty pleased with myself today - I managed to drag my sorry backside out for a run again, thus making sure that my intention to run at least once a week is upheld (at least for now!).  I didn't necessarily fancy doing it, but the weather looked nice outside, and I thought - well, I said I'd go for a run today, so I suppose I had better go...

It was after breakfast (hmm... bacon sarnie, probably not the best pre-run breakfast, but I did make sure I waited over an hour between eating it and going out), and I was able to do the route I like to do because there weren't thousands of other runners in Holyrood Park this week.  

This usual route is 2.41 miles (according to mapmyrun.co.uk) and apparently has me burning off around 400 calories - I wonder if that presumes that I'm running the whole time...  I used the same kind of strategy as last week, but starting off with walking this time as it's uphill to the top of the road and there are usually lots of people around and roads to cross etc.  It's usually a bit disruptive to timing to run at the beginning of this route (although if I was running the whole thing, I would obviously run this bit too).  There's a nice downhill from there swinging round in to the park, which is mostly flat, and then round on to London Road which turns in a bit of an uphill slog for a while before being mostly flat/downhill to home.  

My rough (I really need to get a new battery for my sports watch, the Sportcount isn't quite as good for running) times were:

2 mins walk

5 mins run 

1 min stretching/waiting for lights to change (this is very rough)

2 mins walk

5 mins run

2 mins walk

6 mins run

2 mins walk

6 mins run

2 mins walk

Total: 32.31 minutes

Was really pleased with the two stretches of 6 minutes running, which was better than last week, and it didn't seem to be such a hard hard slog today.  Saying that it was still tough and I do now ache quite a bit...  

Definitely need to buy a new sports bra though, the one I have is really rubbish and I don't think is really doing the job it should be doing.  The swimming costume will just have to wait a month or so.

Overtaking in the slow lane

No, not an illegal move on the motorway, but a realisation that I am slightly faster than a lot of the other people who swim in the slow lane in the pool. Which is satisfying and annoying all at the same time!

I was at the pool again last night, desperate as I am to tone up and lose some more weight and just generally get fitter before I even think about finding a pretty white frock. The new regime and a desire to see if I could beat Monday’s time helped tremendously, and I headed off to the pool after work despite feeling like I could fall asleep on the bus.

Thursday is a general public swimming day (unlike Monday which is ladies only) and as such the pool was pretty busy. When you are trying to time your swim this is very frustrating as you can easily get bogged down in other people, so I try and use the lanes to prevent that. There were about 5 other people in the slow lane with me for most of the time I was there, and while I was a match speed wise for a couple of them, I was certainly faster than the rest, not by much, but enough to be almost swimming on top of them.

Most of my lengths I managed to do with no one in front of me, which was excellent as I could swim at my pace or go faster if I wanted to. A couple of the women though would stop and chat at the shallow end, not only getting in my way when I turned (if you want to swim a bit then chat, you should really go in the main bit of the pool, if you ask me!), but also choosing the moment I was just coming towards them to swim off again, and frankly then getting in my way.

I try and be tolerant because I’m slow and used to be the really slow one, and it’s good that they are there doing anything at all. But it is starting to annoy me. I am no where near fast enough for the fast lane, but feel that it will be difficult to improve when I constantly get stuck behind people.

So, as the title of this entry suggests, I did end up overtaking last night, twice! I’m not sure what the etiquette of this is in a smallish pool, but I’m sure it’s better form than swimming over someone, which is what I felt I would have done. It was too frustrating to swim at the pace these people were and I felt that it would bugger up my times too much too.

I think, ultimately, I am going to have to find another pool and have been investigating joining the University sports centre in town as an alternative. As I teach a class through their Open Learning centre I can get a staff rate for membership and it might just work out cheaper than using the public pools. I just don’t know if it will be any less busy or frustrating!!

Despite all this perceived slowing down and a general tiredness that seemed to sweep over me in the first 10 lengths, I did do my 40 lengths, and I did do them slightly faster than on Monday – which I was surprised about! I think having a time to beat helped, as did the fact that I can’t pause the Sportcount so I don’t feel I can stop at all. Small steps and all that, but at this rate I’ll be down to 30 minutes for the 40 lengths in no time and be upping myself to 50!

I slightly buggered up stopping the Sportcount last night so don’t actually know what my fastest lap was, but I’ll say it was the first, which I have a rough idea of the time of:

40 lengths
32.20.13 minutes (woohoo, nearly a minute faster!)
Average time for a length: 47.34 seconds
Fastest length: 1 at around 38 second, I’m guessing
Slowest length: 37 at 56.08 seconds, but I was stuck behind a slow person I couldn’t overtake on this one.

So a faster average time for a length, a faster fast length and an overall faster time. I’m pretty pleased with that!

I have realised though that I desperately need to get a new swimming costume as the fabric in my current one is going bald in patches. Not good. I’ve seen one I like on the Bravissimo website (a sporty one that actually goes up to my size!), but as I also need a new sports bra and just can’t afford both I’m going to have to have a good long think about which is the more necessary!

New swimming regime

After my run on Saturday I was pretty sore on Sunday/Monday – my thigh muscles ached like there was no tomorrow. I’m still glad I went and I’ll still try to go again this weekend, but boy it hurt!

Still, no pain, no gain…

Was at the pool again on Monday for my usual Monday night swim. Decided on a new tactic for this year. Rather than swimming for a set amount of time I am going to swim a set number of lengths, regardless of how long it takes me. Then I can work on trying to get a bit quicker, trying to beat my time for that number of lengths and then up the number of lengths as the weeks go on, thus helping me get fitter!

As I normally swim about 34 lengths or so in half an hour I decided to start off at a relatively gentle 40 lengths target. The pool is the average 25 yards that local pools seem to be (around 23 metres) so that would be a nice half a mile (or around 914 metres according to an online calculator I've just found...)

I had bought myself a new gizmo last week to help me count lengths and time myself and I must say it worked a treat (as did my new approach). Gone was the constant craning up at the clock as I watched the minutes tick past. Instead I could concentrate on counting my lengths and let the gizmo time me (and keep a track on my counting!).


It's called a Sportcount and it's pretty good as it just sits on your index finger and you can press the button with your thumb when you turn and it provides lap count and split times during your workout, and reports summary statistics at the end of the session.

I like to count the lengths in my head as well as it’s a way of using the swimming as mental relaxation as well as physical exercise. It clears my brain of whatever else might be clogging it up. As I was going for a nice round set number of lengths I could neatly count them in sets of 10, which I found to be a great psychological boost – it meant I didn’t have to concentrate on the large number left til the end, but on how many I had to do in this set – 10 is a much better number to aim at than 40!

By the end of my 40 lengths I could happily have done another 10 at least, which was both surprising and made me feel good. I might even have done so if I hadn’t been wanting to start off modestly (just because I had the energy for it this week, doesn’t mean I will next!), and if I hadn’t arranged for the Fiancé to meet me at a specific time.

The gizmo gives me some lovely stats, so here are last nights:

40 lengths
33.07.75 minutes
Average time for a length: 49.69 seconds (pretty slow, I know)
Fastest length: 1 at 40.25 seconds
Slowest length: 16 at 53.43 seconds

Not quite sure why 16 was my slowest, but interesting that it was one in the middle, not one at the end. It might have been one where I got stuck behind a slow person – the real bane of public swimming (particularly in January when every one has resolutions to break).

Pretty pleased with all that, particularly the overall time, which I thought was going to be slower for the 40 lengths. So next time my challenge is to try and make them a bit faster. Let’s see how I do…

Run!

Yes, I went for a run this morning.  Or more accurately a jog/walk combo.  Felt the urge so thought I should act on it.  And then got annoyed that I couldn't go on my usual route because the Great Winter Run and some crazy cross country thing is on in Holyrood Park today.  Goddamn them...  Nearly didn't go when I found out, but was in the mood and didn't want to give up on that.  So I decided to do my alternative route (that I dislike) instead.  

Only just over 2 miles (my ipod claimed it was 2.5 but mapmyrun told me it was 2.2) and 29 minutes, there and back.  I managed to run more than I walked and do pretty consistent splits:

5 mins run

2 mins walk

5 mins run

2 mins walk

5 mins run (this was bloody hard)

2 1/2 mins walk

2 1/2 mins run

2 1/2 mins walk

2 1/2 mins run

It's not a great route as it's down hill then flat then an uphill struggle back, but frankly I did bloody well not to just walk all of it at the end.  And even better to do it at all!

Probably overdid it for a first go out for ages, but I'm pleased (and proud of myself) that I went at all.  Will try and go out at least once a week this year (upping to twice when it gets lighter and I can run during the week).  If I want to lose that next stone by June, it's got to help!  

I shall hurt tomorrow though.