Its been 4 weeks since the house move. We have relocated to the east end of London to start another chapter of this journey.

We have rented a beautiful 2 bed house which has lots of space and a lovely small garden. This time the garden is square, a nicer change from what we previously had - which was a long narrow garden. It has artificial grass for easy maintenance, a lovely raised pond (yet to be used) patio area and a shed. The outside space will be great for the summer next year, and there will be a small area I can use to plant some fruit and veg in the spring, my little bliss.

Living in London comes at a price, it is not cheap! Rent is high and bills need to be paid. We were getting by where we were in our previous little house.  However the rent was expensive and we had little money spare each month.

Two friends of ours were in a similar position, they were relocating to London from Brazil and staying with friends whilst looking for an apartment. They had been looking since March however their budget was low. Me and Andy had spoken a few times about the idea of house sharing to make the bills and rent cheaper and in August we decided it was the right thing to do. So we are now sharing with another professional married couple Carmen and Priscila.

New house, new house mates & a whole lot of the unknown. 

The area is nice, we are right beside a large park which is convenient for the dog. 30 minutes to London Liverpool street and we have a lot of local amenities within a 20 minute walk. We also have Stratford on our doorstep! So a 20 minutes commute to the heart of stratford shopping centre Westfield. However I am going to miss my weekend walks to Ladywell park and the walks to Greenwich. However with some further exploring we found a lovely park called Valentines Park. Perfect for weekend strolls with the pup and it will be beautiful in the summer.

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.