Monday gym

Gym after work (even though it was dark and I wanted to go home and hibernate):

• 0.5 miles cross trainer
• 1.5 miles treadmill, incline 2%, 6.1 mph
• 1 rep of 10 for each of three grips on seated back, weights set at 5
• 3 reps of 10 shoulder press, weights set at 2 (pathetic)
• 3 reps of 10 tripcep kickback, weights set at 5
• 2 reps of 10 for each of two grips lateral pull down, weights set at 7 (not pathetic)
• 1 mile treadmill, as before

Not going to bother with the lunch time class again tomorrow. Will try and find proper pilates or yoga instead.

101 posts

Didn't realise until today but that last post was my 100th. A milestone and, hopefully, impetus to get me to carry on blogging.

Just a quick update today. Did I say I'd taken the decision to run the Alloa half marathon in March? So training for that starts now. Went to the gym last week, first for a lunch time class that was supposed to be pilates and toning. But when I got there they'd changed it to aerobics. Which was fine, but I really wanted some core strength conditioning to complement my running. I didn't particularly need a workout. Shame, because that means there are no pilates classes at all either at lunch time or after work. Maybe I can find an after work one at another gym or hall.

Went back on Thursday for a gym session, doing five minutes on the cross trainer followed by two 1 mile runs at 2% incline and 6mph. In between the miles I went and played with all the weight machines to try and remember how they worked and what level of weights was feasible. I decided to try and do regular work on the back machine, lateral pull down, triceps and shoulder press. All good for the surfing. A week in Fueteventura is now booked so I need all the practice I can get.

Spent yesterday and today helping Fi and Ailsa move, so I can add some heavy lifting to the list. Their new place is gorgeous already, and I can't wait to see it when decorating is finished.

In other news, some plants I ordered online ages ago finally arrived and I've planted up two big tubs: one with heathers and an acer and one with lavender and rosemary. Round the back, in the bed my mum dug over when she came to stay, I've put hollyhocks, delphiniums and dwarf lupins. Round the front I cleared as much gravel as I could from the bed by the door and topped it up with compost to make a mini raised bed and put in scabiosa perfecta, delphiniums and a couple of left over lavender. I've planted a few smaller pots with daffs and tulip bulbs but still have loads left so will stalk the garden tomorrow night looking for appropriate places to bury them.

I've recorded all this here in case I forget what I put where. Plus, if my running goes to pot (no pun intended) I can always record the progress of my plants.

Doggy run

Well, not quite as long a break as last time. Went for a run after work in the glorious autumnal evening air, and took the Diggler along. He was very good, coming back when called and pausing only briefly to play with a jack russell. He was knackered afterwards as Al had walked him already during the day and yesterday we went up the hill for a 'short' walk that turned into two hours (lovely though) during which Dougal ran non-stop. Afterwards he fell fast asleep on the sofa and refused to play with me, even though he'd woken me up that very morning when I wanted to lie in and refused to let me get back to sleep. He is very selfish.

Ailsa is right: running does banish bad moods and even my pathetic half hour tonight helped to lessen my frustration at a bunch of councillors who don't really understand what branding is or what they want from it. After spending months defending this county from accusations of provincialism, I really felt it was small minded and unprofessional for politicians to look at the research I'd done and say 'Well maybe everyone else thinks that, but I think we should just do what I want, even though there's no evidence to back it up whatsoever.' Very provincial.

I'm getting annoyed again so I will move on.

Here's a list of books I stole from Fi's blog. She can tell you all about it, but I've changed it so the ones I've read are in bold. Like her, I've changed the last two.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - have read less than half of the series so that doesn't count
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible - only a few bits. The Book of Ruth. Stuff like that.
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (much better than Harry Potter)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete work of Shakespere - again, less than half
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (loved it, even though I put off reading it for ages because I was afraid it wouldn't live up to the hype).
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - hmm, must put that on my reading list
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - but it took me two years and by the time I got to the end I'd forgotten what happened at the beginning
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - but I read the next one he wrote
37. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - I've never heard of this. Is it famous?
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.
47. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - saw the tv series though
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - pretty sure I did read this ages ago
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdi
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce - started it, never finished
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - did actually borrow this from a friend at school, even though my mum banned Enid Blyton from house.
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
99. The Kraken Wakes - John Wyndham - there's a shocking derth of sci-fi on this list, unless you count Orwell and Huxley
100. The Koran - I bought a copy of this and have read bits of it. But I got bored because it was so similar to the Bible.

I make that 51% and a few good ideas for when I finish my current bedtime reading (Grazia magazine). No more Hardy though. Or The Da Vinci Code.