A friend of mine has recently been sharing his success pictures this summer of the Spartan events he had attended. I have barely been able to keep with my jogging routine let alone tackle a 3+ miles obstacle course. However I was intrigued and for some odd reason it looked fun.

I think it must be the fact that there are obstacles along the way, such as climbing over walls, swimming and crawling under barbed wire fencing that made me want to tackle it. Im not the kind of girl who would just enjoy running a marathon for instance.  So i did the stupid thing of convincing myself to give it ago and sign up for 2016.

I knew I would need someone to join me for extra encouragement and to help me get into shape and train for this event. So I have got a group of friends together who are also interested in tackling the sprint next year. Shortly after I has signed both myself and Andy up I received an email with a workout guide to prepare yourself for the sprint. My first thoughts, what am I getting myself into.

My trainers that I ordered finally arrived. I had previously been running in my converse and I just didn't feel comfortable jogging with such flat shoes. I ordered some pretty basic Puma running trainers from M&M direct for £25 and they seem to be doing the job. They even match my running outfit - another cheap purchase I recently made from Primark: lycra shorts, sports bra and vest top. I didn't want to heavily invest with named running gear as I wasn't certain I would enjoy it.

A few weeks in now and I am still on/off with the jogging. I haven't yet quite managed to do a full 2 weeks. I have been very distracted the past week or so as we have decided we are going to be moving. Looking for a place to rent which allows pets is not that easy in London. We did however manage to find a lovely home which we are hoping to share with our two friends. This is so we can save money and start saving towards a Mortgage. Fingers crossed we hear next week.

So in between juggling work with house hunting, walking the dog and cooking dinners I have hardly made time for myself and my running! Mostly due to being slightly more stressed than usual and incredibly tired in the mornings. I have struggled to find the motivation to get out of bed first thing and just go. Im going to be away this weekend, however I am planning on getting back into my routine on the Monday and I have a new cool gadget to try.



Last week my Fitbit Flex arrived. I was using the Fitbit app for a while on my iphone which I liked as it counts my steps, tracks my running and has some fun achievement medals when you reach certain goals. However having my phone strapped to my arm was not the most comfortable thing whilst jogging. So I decided to invest into one last purchase for this new running malarky.

Its a small sleek device that you wear on your wrist. Its really easy and comfortable to wear and I even sleep in it as it records how well you slept. It also has a silent alarm which gently vibrates to wake you up in the mornings another nice feature. You can set different goals, challenge friends and keep track of a range of different categories such as calories, weight, sleep patterns, walking / running / cycling. I recently earned the penguin march badge - 112 kilometers.

I have very recently gotten myself into jogging. Its something that I  have never wanted or even thought of doing if i'm completely honest. Im not a very sporty girl, I am the average joe who smacks the alarm at 6.45am in the morning to stay in bed that extra hour (or 2) longer. I am not a morning person - far from it. 

Im pretty lucky in that I am a self employed graphic designer and I work from home, so I do not have to rush to commute to my job in the mornings. My typical days since loosing my job (the company moved to another location) & moving to London usually start with my husband kissing me goodbye as he went off to work and I  crawl out of bed at a certain part of the day to see what work needed finishing. On good days I am sat at my work desk by 10am and tackling my design jobs, replying to emails and contacting clients about future projects.

However as I have found freelancing can also be lonely, team that with anxiety and depression and you get bad days. When I have no work on or even when I have very low mood days I can actually struggle to get myself up before 1pm. This does have a big impact on my work and can cause more self loathing and upset. Depression makes me not want to do anything and it results in me sleeping my days away - literally.

I was continually going in these vicious cycles.  
I have lived in London for 2 years now, for me the first year was the biggest challenge. It was a roller coaster of emotion pretty much for a solid year. I have always had anxiety so moving to London was a huge challenge and the anxiety rocketed and hit me hard. New places, new faces, trying to get use to a big city and tackle a job. It made me really Ill. 

With the help of CBT I am slowly on the mend. This second year has been less challenging and although it has not been as hard or daunting - Im getting very use to London now, however I do still struggle with bad & low days and Im getting tired of being on this rollercoaster. So as I was saying in this previous blog post - its time to break the bad habits. In order to overcome anxiety and depression, you have to do.

Thats where the jogging comes in. My husband is fairly active, he loves his job and he also cycles to work up to 4 times a week. A huge 50 minute bike ride from our tiny house in Hither green all the way to shoreditch. He is also the genius behind me jogging. He suggesting one day I come jogging with him in the mornings. At first I laughed it off, no way was I getting up at 7am to go jogging! But more recently when another wave of depression hit it came hard and I couldn't keep doing this to myself. Thats when I decided I needed to make changes for me and my husband.

It works and it makes your feel great. 

Its really hard work! Im only managing a mile at the moment which is around 10 minutes and i won't lie it hasn't been consistent each morning. Yesterday I just could not find the will to get out of bed - my biggest challenge. Today I managed to get myself to go, however I then got back into bed and fell asleep for another 3 hours. I lost the feel good feeling and just felt bad for the rest of the day. So learning from this my aim for the rest of this week is too get up and go and not allow myself to climb back into bed! Small steps everyday.